LIBRARY 

UNIVERSITY  OP 
CALIFORNIA 
SAN  DIEGO 


Works  by  WILLIAM  JAMES,  M.D.,  Ph.  et 
Liit.D.,  LL.D. ;  Correspondent  of  the  Insti- 
tute of  France  ;  Professor  of  Philosophy  at 
Harvard  University. 

The  Principles  of  Psychology.  2  vols.  8vo. 
New  York:  Henry  Holt  &  Co.  1890. 

Psychology :  Briefer  Course.  i2mo.  New 
York:  Henry  Holt  &  Co.  1892. 

The  Will  to  Believe,  and  Other  Essays  in 
Popular  Philosophy.  New  York:  Long- 
mans,  Green  &  Co.  1897. 

Is  Life  Worth  Living  ?  i8mo.  Philadelphia: 
S.  B.  Weston,  1305  Arch  Street.  1896. 

Human  Immortality :  Two  Supposed  Objec- 
tions to  the  Doctrine.  i6mo.  Boston: 
Houghton,  Mifflin  &  Co.  1898. 


The    Literary   Remains   of    Henry  James. 

Edited,  with  an    Introduction,  by  WILLIAM 
JAMBS,    With  Portrait.    Crown  8vo.    1885. 


TALKS  TO  TEACHERS 

ON  PSYCHOLOGY:  AND  TO 
STUDENTS  ON  SOME  OF  LIFE'S 
IDEALS.  By  WILLIAM  JAMES 


NEW  YORK 

HENRY  HOLT  AND  COMPANY 
J899 


COPYRIGHT 

1899 
BY  WILLIAM   JAM! 


PREFACE. 


IN  1892  I  was  asked  by  the  Harvard  Corporation 
to  give  a  few  public  lectures  on  psychology  to  the 
Cambridge  teachers.  The  talks  now  printed  form  the 
substance  of  that  course,  which  has  since  then  been 
delivered  at  various  places  to  various  teacher-audi- 
ences. I  have  found  by  experience  that  what  my 
hearers  seem  least  to  relish  is  analytical  technicality, 
and  what  they  most  care  for  is  concrete  practical 
application.  So  I  have  gradually  weeded  out  the 
former,  and  left  the  latter  unreduced ;  and,  now  that 
I  have  at  last  written  out  the  lectures,  they  contain 
a  minimum  of  what  is  deemed  'scientific'  in  psy- 
chology, and  are  practical  and  popular  in  the  ex- 
treme. 

Some  of  my  colleagues  may  possibly  shake  their 
heads  at  this;  but  in  taking  my  cue  from  what  has 
seemed  to  me  to  be  the  feeling  of  the  audiences  I  be- 
lieve that  I  am  shaping  my  book  so  as  to  satisfy  the 
more  genuine  public  need. 

Teachers,  of  course,  will  miss  the  minute  divisions, 
subdivisions,  and  definitions,  the  lettered  and  num- 
bered headings,  the  variations  of  type,  and  all  the 


IV  PREFACE 

other  mechanical  artifices  on  which  they  are  accus- 
tomed to  prop  their  minds.  But  my  main  desire  has 
been  to  make  them  conceive,  and,  if  possible,  re- 
produce sympathetically  in  their  imagination,  the 
mental  life  of  their  pupil  as  the  sort  of  active  unity 
which  he  himself  feels  it  to  be.  He  doesn't  chop 
himself  into  distinct  processes  and  compartments; 
and  it  would  have  frustrated  this  deeper  purpose  of 
my  book  to  make  it  look,  when  printed,  like  a  Bae- 
deker's handbook  of  travel  or  a  text-book  of  arithme- 
tic. So  far  as  books  printed  like  this  book  force  the 
fluidity  of  the  facts  upon  the  young  teacher's  atten- 
tion, so  far  I  am  sure  they  tend  to  do  his  intellect 
a  service,  even  though  they  may  leave  unsatisfied 
a  craving  (not  altogether  without  its  legitimate 
grounds)  for  more  nomenclature,  head-lines,  and 
subdivisions. 

Readers  acquainted  with  my  larger  books  on  Psy- 
chology will  meet  much  familiar  phraseology.  In  the 
chapters  on  habit  and  memory  I  have  even  copied 
several  pages  verbatim,  but  I  do  not  know  that 
apology  is  needed  for  such  plagiarism  as  this. 

The  talks  to  students,  which  conclude  the  volume, 
were  written  in  response  to  invitations  to  deliver 
'addresses'  to  students  at  women's  colleges.  The 
first  one  was  to  the  graduating  class  of  the  Boston 
Normal  School  of  Gymnastics.  Properly,  it  contin- 


PREFACE  V 

ues  the  series  of  talks  to  teachers.  The  second  and 
the  third  address  belong  together,  and  continue  an- 
other line  of  thought. 

I  wish  I  were  able  to  make  the  second,  '  On  a  Cer- 
tain Blindness  in  Human  Beings,'  more  impressive. 
It  is  more  than  the  mere  piece  of  sentimentalism 
which  it  may  seem  to  some  readers.  It  connects 
itself  with  a  definite  view  of  the  world  and  of  our 
moral  relations  to  the  same.  Those  who  have  done 
me  the  honor  of  reading  my  volume  of  philosophic 
essays  will  recognize  that  I  mean  the  pluralistic  or 
individualistic  philosophy.  According  to  that  philos- 
ophy, the  truth  is  too  great  for  any  one  actual  mind, 
even  though  that  mind  be  dubbed  '  the  Absolute,'  to 
know  the  whole  of  it.  The  facts  and  worths  of  life 
need  many  cognizers  to  take  them  in.  There  is  no 
point  of  view  absolutely  public  and  universal.  Pri- 
vate and  uncommunicable  perceptions  always  remain 
over,  and  the  worst  of  it  is  that  those  who  look  for 
them  from  the  outside  never  know  where. 

The  practical  consequence  of  such  a  philosophy  is 
the  well-known  democratic  respect  for  the  sacredness 
of  individuality, —  is,  at  any  rate,  the  outward  tolerance 
of  whatever  is  not  itself  intolerant.  These  phrases 
are  so  familiar  that  they  sound  now  rather  dead  in 
our  ears.  Once  they  had  a  passionate  inner  meaning. 
Such  a  passionate  inner  meaning  they  may  easily 


VI  PREFACE 

acquire  again  if  the  pretension  of  our  nation  to  inflict 
its  own  inner  ideals  and  institutions  vi  et  armis  upon 
Orientals  should  meet  with  a  resistance  as  obdurate  as 
so  far  it  has  been  gallant  and  spirited.  Religiously 
and  philosophically,  our  ancient  national  doctrine  of 
live  and  let  live  may  prove  to  have  a  far  deeper 
meaning  than  our  people  now  seem  to  imagine  it  to 
possess. 

CAMBBHXJS,  MASSU,  March,  1899. 


CONTENTS. 


TALKS  TO   TEACHERS. 

PAGE 

I.  PSYCHOLOGY  AND  THE  TEACHING  ART  .  .   3 

The  American  educational  organization,  3  — 
What  teachers  may  expect  from  psychology,  5  — 
Teaching  methods  must  agree  with  psychology, 
but  cannot  be  immediately  deduced  therefrom,  7  — 
The  science  of  teaching  and  the  science  of  war, 

9  —  The  educational  uses  of  psychology  defined, 

10  —  The  teacher's  duty  toward  child-study,  12. 

II.  THE  STREAM  OF  CONSCIOUSNESS      ...     15 

Our  mental  life  is  a  succession  of  conscious 
fields,'  15  —  They  have   a  focus  and  a  margin, 
18  —  This  description  contrasted  with  the  theory 
of  'ideas,'  20  —  Wundt's  conclusions,  20,  note. 

III.  THE  CHILD  AS  A  BEHAVING  ORGANISM      .     22 

Mind  as  pure  reason  and  mind  as  practical 
guide,  22  —  The  latter  view  the  more  fashionable 
one  to-day,  23 — It  will  be  adopted  in  this  work, 
24  — Why  so?  25  — The  teacher's  function  is  to 
train  pupils  to  behavior,  28. 

IV.  EDUCATION  AND  BEHAVIOR 29 

Education  defined,  29  —  Conduct  is  always  its 
outcome,  30  —  Different  national  ideals  :  Germany 
and  England,  31. 


Vlil  CONTENTS 

PAGE 

V.  THE  NECESSITY  OF  REACTIONS  ....     33 

,  No  impression  without  expression,  33 — Verbal 

reproduction,   34  —  Manual  training,  35  —  Pupils 
should  know  their  '  marks,'  37. 

VI.  NATIVE  AND  ACQUIRED  REACTIONS      .     .     38 

The  acquired  reactions  must  be  preceded  by 
native  ones,  38  —  Illustration :  teaching  child  to 
ask  instead  of  snatching,  39  —  Man  has  more  in- 
stincts than  other  mammals,  43. 


VII.  WHAT  THE  NATIVE  REACTIONS  AKE    .     .    45 

Fear  and  love,  45  —  Curiosity,  45  —  Imitation, 
48  —  Emulation,  49 — Forbidden  by  Rousseau,  61 

—  His  error,  52 —  Ambition,  pugnacity,  and  pride. 
Soft  pedagogics   and  the   fighting  impulse,   54  — 
Ownership,  55  —  Its  educational  uses,  56  —  Con- 
structiveness,  58  —  Manual  teaching,  59  —  Transi- 
toriness  in  instincts,  60  —  Their  order  of  succes- 
sion, 61. 

VIII.  THE  LAWS  OF  HABIT 64 

Good  and  bad  habits,  64  —  Habit  due  to  plasti- 
city of  organic  tissues,  65  —  The  aim  of  education 
is  to  make  useful  habits  automatic,  66  —  Maxims 
relative  to  habit-forming:  1.  Strong  initiative,  67 

—  2.  No  exception,  68  —  3.  Seize  first  opportunity 
to  act,    69  —  4.  Don't  preach,    71  —  Darwin  and 
poetry :  without  exercise  our  capacities  decay,  71 

—  The  habit  of  mental  and  muscular  relaxation, 
74 — Fifth    maxim,   keep    the    faculty   of    effort, 
trained,  75  —  Sudden  conversions  compatible  with 
laws  of  habit,  76  —  Momentous  influence  of  habits 
on  character,  77. 


CONTENTS  ix 

PAGE 

IX.  THE  ASSOCIATION  OF  IDEAS 79 

A  case  of  habit,  79  —  The  two  laws,  contiguity 
and  similarity,  80  —  The  teacher  has  to  build  up 
useful  systems  of  association,  83  —  Habitual  asso- 
ciations determine  character,  84  —  Indeterminate- 
ness  of  our  trains  of  association,  85  —  We  can 
trace  them  backward,  but  not  foretell  them,  86  — 
Interest  deflects,  87  —  Prepotent  parts  of  the  field, 
88  —  In  teaching,  multiply  cues,  89. 

X.  INTEREST 91 

The  child's  native  interests,  91  —  How  uninterest- 
ing things  acquire  an  interest,  94  —  Rules  for  the 
teacher,  95  —  'Preparation'  of  the  mind  for  the 
lesson:  the  pupil  must  hare  something  to  attend 
with,  97  —  All  later  interests  are  borrowed  from 
original  ones,  99. 

XI.  ATTENTION 100 

Interest  and  attention  are  two  aspects  of  one 
fact,  100  —  Voluntary  attention  comes  in  beats, 
101  —  Genius  and  attention,  102  —  The  subject 
must  change  to  win  attention,  103  —  Mechanical 
aids,  104 — The  physiological  process,  106  —  The 
new  in  the  old  is  what  excites  interest,  108 — In- 
terest and  effort  are  compatible,  110  —  Mind-wan- 
dering, 112  —  Not  fatal  to  mental  efficiency,  114. 

XII.  MEMORY 116 

Due  to  association,  116  —  No  recall  without  a 
cue,  118  —  Memory  is  due  to  brain- plasticity,  119 
— Native  retentiveness,  120  — Number  of  associa- 
tions may  practically  be  its  equivalent,  122  —  Ke- 
tentiveness  is  a  fixed  property  of  the  individual, 
123  —  Memory  versus  memories,  124  —  Scientific 


X  CONTENTS 

PAGE 

system  as  help  to  memory,  126  —  Technical  mem- 
ories, 127  —  Cramming,  129  —  Elementary  memory 
unimprovable,  130  —  Utility  of  verbal  memorizing, 
131  —  Measurements  of  immediate  memory,  133  — 
They  throw  little  light,  134  —  Passion  is  the  im- 
portant factor  in  human  efficiency,  137  —  Eye- 
memory,  ear-memory,  etc.,  137  —  The  rate  of 
forgetting,  Ebbinghaus's  results,  139  —  Influence 
of  the  unreproducible,  142  —  To  remember,  one 
must  think  and  connect,  143. 

XIII.  THE  ACQUISITION  OF  IDEAS 144 

Education  gives  a  stock  of  conceptions,  144  — 
The  order  of  their  acquisition,  146  —  Value  of 
verbal  material,  149  —  Abstractions  of  different 
orders:  when  are  they  assimilable,  151  —  False 
conceptions  of  children,  152. 

XIV.  APPERCEPTION 155 

Often  a  mystifying  idea,  155  —  The  process  de- 
fined, 157  —  The  law  of  economy,  159  —  Old- 
f  ogyism,  160  —  How  many  types  of  apperception  ? 
161  —  New  heads  of  classification  must  continually 
be  invented,  163 — Alteration  of  the  apperceiving 
mass,  165  —  Class-names  are  what  we  work  by, 
166  —  Few  new  fundamental  conceptions  acquired 
after  twenty-five,  167. 

XV.  THE  WILL 169 

The  word  defined,  169  —  All  consciousness  tends 
to  action,  170  —  Ideo-motor  action,  171  —  Inhibi- 
tion, 172 — The  process  of  deliberation,  174  — 
Why  so  few  of  our  ideas  result  in  acts,  176  — 
The  associationist  account  of  the  will,  177  —  A 
balance  of  impulses  and  inhibitions,  178  —  The 


CONTENTS  Xi 

PAGE 

orer-impulsive  and  the  over-obstructed  type,  179 
—  The  perfect  type,  180 — The  balky  will,  181  — 
What  character-building  consists  in,  184  —  Right 
action  depends  on  right  apperception  of  the  case, 
185 — Effort  of  will  is  effort  of  attention:  the 
drunkard's  dilemma,  187  —  Vital  importance  of 
voluntary  attention,  189  —  Its  amount  maybe  in- 
determinate, 191  —  Affirmation  of  free-will,  192  — 
Two  types  of  inhibition,  193  —  Spinoza  on  inhibi- 
tion by  a  higher  good,  194  —  Conclusion,  195 


TALKS  TO  STUDENTS. 

I. 
THE   GOSPEL   OF  RELAXATION  ....  199 

II. 
ON  A  CERTAIN  BLINDNESS  IN  HUMAN  BEINGS  229 

III. 
WHAT  MAKES   A  LIFE   SIGNIFICANT?  .  .  265 


TALKS  TO  TEACHERS 


I. 

PSYCHOLOGY  AND  THE  TEACHING  ART 

IN  the  general  activity  and  uprising  of  ideal  in- 
terests which  every  one  with  an  eye  for  fact  can 
discern  all  about  us  in  American  life,  there  is  per- 
haps no  more  promising  feature  than  the  fermen- 
tation which  for  a  dozen  years  or  more  has  been 
going  on  among  the  teachers.  In  whatever  sphere 
of  education  their  functions  may  lie,  there  is  to 
be  seen  among  them  a  really  inspiring  amount  of 
searching  of  the  heart  about  the  highest  concerns 
of  their  profession.  The  renovation  of  nations 
begins  always  at  the  top,  among  the  reflective 
members  of  the  State,  and  spreads  slowly  outward 
and  downward.  The  teachers  of  this  country, 
one  may  say,  have  its  future  in  their  hands.  The 
earnestness  which  they  at  present  show  in  striving 
to  enlighten  and  strengthen  themselves  is  an  index 
of  the  nation's  probabilities  of  advance  in  all  ideal 
directions.  The  outward  organization  of  educa- 
tion which  we  have  in  our  United  States  is  per- 


4  TALKS   TO   TEACHEES 

haps,  on  the  whole,  the  best  organization  that 
exists  in  any  country.  The  State  school  systems 
give  a  diversity  and  flexibility,  an  opportunity  for 
experiment  and  keenness  of  competition,  nowhere 
else  to  be  found  on  such  an  important  scale.  The 
independence  of  so  many  of  the  colleges  and  uni- 
versities; the  give  and  take  of  students  and  in- 
structors between  them  all ;  their  emulation,  and 
their  happy  organic  relations  to  the  lower  schools ; 
the  traditions  of  instruction  in  them,  evolved  from 
the  older  American  recitation-method  (and  so 
avoiding  on  the  one  hand  the  pure  lecture-sys- 
tem prevalent  in  Germany  and  Scotland,  which 
considers  too  little  the  individual  student,  and  yet 
not  involving  the  sacrifice  of  the  instructor  to  the 
individual  student,  which  the  English  tutorial  sys- 
tem would  seem  too  often  to  entail), —  all  these 
things  (to  say  nothing  of  that  coeducation  of  the 
sexes  in  whose  benefits  so  many  of  us  heartily 
believe),  all  these  things,  I  say,  are  most  happy 
features  of  our  scholastic  life,  and  from  them  the 
most  sanguine  auguries  may  be  drawn. 

Having  so  favorable  an  organization,  all  we 
need  is  to  impregnate  it  with  geniuses,  to  get 
superior  men  and  women  working  more  and  more 
abundantly  in  it  and  for  it  and  at  it,  and  in  a 


PSYCHOLOGY  AND  THE  TEACHING  AET    5 

generation  or  two  America  may  well  lead  the 
education  of  the  world.  I  must  say  that  I  look 
forward  with  no  little  confidence  to  the  day  when 
that  shall  be  an  accomplished  fact. 

No  one  has  profited  more  by  the  fermentation 
of  which  I  speak,  in  pedagogical  circles,  than  we 
psychologists.  The  desire  of  the  schoolteachers 
for  a  completer  professional  training,  and  their 
aspiration  toward  the  '  professional '  spirit  in  their 
work,  have  led  them  more  and  more  to  turn  to  us 
for  light  on  fundamental  principles.  And  in  these 
few  hours  which  we  are  to  spend  together  you 
look  to  me,  I  am  sure,  for  information  concerning 
the  mind's  operations,  which  may  enable  you  to 
labor  more  easily  and  effectively  in  the  several 
schoolrooms  over  which  you  preside. 

Far  be  it  from  me  to  disclaim  for  psychology  all 
title  to  such  hopes.  Psychology  ought  certainly 
to  give  the  teacher  radical  help.  And  yet  I  con- 
fess that,  acquainted  as  I  am  with  the  height  of 
some  of  your  expectations,  I  feel  a  little  anxious 
lest,  at  the  end  of  these  simple  talks  of  mine,  not 
a  few  of  you  may  experience  some  disappointment 
at  the  net  results.  In  other  words,  I  am  not  sure 
that  you  may  not  be  indulging  fancies  that  are 
just  a  shade  exaggerated.  That  would  not  be 


6  TALKS   TO  TEACHERS 

altogether  astonishing,  for  we  have  been  having 
something  like  a  'boom'  in  psychology  in  this 
country.  Laboratories  and  professorships  have 
been  founded,  and  reviews  established.  The  air 
has  been  full  of  rumors.  The  editors  of  educa- 
tional journals  and  the  arrangers  of  conventions 
have  had  to  show  themselves  enterprising  and  on  a 
level  with  the  novelties  of  the  day.  Some  of  the 
professors  have  not  been  unwilling  to  co-operate, 
and  I  am  not  sure  even  that  the  publishers  have 
been  entirely  inert.  'The  new  psychology'  has 
thus  become  a  term  to  conjure  up  portentous  ideas 
withal;  and  you  teachers,  docile  and  receptive 
and  aspiring  as  many  of  you  are,  have  been 
plunged  in  an  atmosphere  of  vague  talk  about  our 
science,  which  to  a  great  extent  has  been  more 
mystifying  than  enlightening.  Altogether  it  does 
seem  as  if  there  were  a  certain  fatality  of  mystifi- 
cation laid  upon  the  teachers  of  our  day.  The  mat- 
ter of  their  profession,  compact  enough  in  itself, 
has  to  be  frothed  up  for  them  in  journals  and  insti- 
tutes, till  its  outlines  often  threaten  to  be  lost  in 
a  kind  of  vast  uncertainty.  Where  the  disciples 
are  not  independent  and  critical-minded  enough 
(and  I  think  that,  if  you  teachers  in  the  earlier 
grades  have  any  defect  —  the  slightest  touch  of  a 


THE   'NEW'   PSYCHOLOGY  7 

defect  in  the  world — it  is  that  you  are  a  mite  too 
docile),  we  are  pretty  sure  to  miss  accuracy  and 
balance  and  measure  in  those  who  get  a  license  to 
lay  down  the  law  to  them  from  above. 

As  regards  this  subject  of  psychology,  now,  I 
wish  at  the  very  threshold  to  do  what  I  can  to  dis- 
pel the  mystification.  So  I  say  at  once  that  in 
my  humble  opinion  there  is  no  *  new  psychology  ' 
worthy  of  the  name.  There  is  nothing  but  the 
old  psychology  which  began  in  Locke's  time,  plus 
a  little  physiology  of  the  brain  and  senses  and 
theory  of  evolution,  and  a  few  refinements  of  intro- 
spective detail,  for  the  most  part  without  adapta- 
tion to  the  teacher's  use.  It  is  only  the  funda- 
mental conceptions  of  psychology  which  are  of 
real  value  to  the  teacher ;  and  they,  apart  from  the 
aforesaid  theory  of  evolution,  are  very  far  from 
being  new. — I  trust  that  you  will  see  better  what 
I  mean  by  this  at  the  end  of  all  these  talks. 

I  say  moreover  that  you  make  a  great,  a  very 
great  mistake,  if  you  think  that  psychology,  being 
the  science  of  the  mind's  laws,  is  something  from 
which  you  can  deduce  definite  programmes  and 
schemes  and  methods  of  instruction  for  immediate 
schoolroom  use.  Psychology  is  a  science,  and 
teaching  is  an  art;  and  sciences  never  generate 


8  TALKS   TO   TEACHERS 

arts  directly  out  of  themselves.  An  intermediary 
inventive  mind  must  make  the  application,  by 
using  its  originality. 

The  science  of  logic  never  made  a  man  reason 
rightly,  and  the  science  of  ethics  (if  there  be  such 
a  thing)  never  made  a  man  behave  rightly.  The 
most  such  sciences  can  do  is  to  help  us  to  catch 
ourselves  up  and  check  ourselves,  if  we  start  to 
reason  or  to  behave  wrongly ;  and  to  criticise  our- 
selves more  articulately  after  we  have  made  mis- 
takes. A  science  only  lays  down  lines  within 
which  the  rules  of  the  art  must  fall,  laws  which 
the  follower  of  the  art  must  not  transgress ;  but 
what  particular  thing  he  shall  positively  do  within 
those  lines  is  left  exclusively  to  his  own  genius. 
One  genius  will  do  his  work  well  and  succeed  in 
one  way,  while  another  succeeds  as  well  quite  dif- 
ferently ;  yet  neither  will  transgress  the  lines. 

The  art  of  teaching  grew  up  in  the  schoolroom, 
out  of  inventiveness  and  sympathetic  concrete  ob- 
servation. Even  where  (as  in  the  case  of  Herbart) 
the  advancer  of  the  art  was  also  a  psychologist, 
the  pedagogics  and  the  psychology  ran  side  by 
side,  and  the  former  was  not  derived  in  any  sense 
from  the  latter.  The  two  were  congruent,  but 
neither  was  subordinate.  And  so  everywhere  the 


SCIENCES  AND   AETS  9 

teaching  must  agree  with  the  psychology,  but  need 
not  necessarily  be  the  only  kind  of  teaching  that 
would  so  agree ;  for  many  diverse  methods  of 
teaching  may  equally  well  agree  with  psychologi- 
cal laws. 

To  know  psychology,  therefore,  is  absolutely  no 
guarantee  that  we  shall  be  good  teachers.  To  ad- 
vance to  that  result,  we  must  have  an  additional 
endowment  altogether,  a  happy  tact  and  ingenuity 
to  tell  us  what  definite  things  to  say  and  do  when 
the  pupil  is  before  us.  That  ingenuity  in  meeting 
and  pursuing  the  pupil,  that  tact  for  the  concrete 
situation,  though  they  are  the  alpha  and  omega  of 
the  teacher's  art,  are  things  to  which  psychology 
cannot  help  us  in  the  least. 

The  science  of  psychology,  and  whatever  science 
of  general  pedagogics  may  be  based  on  it,  are  in 
fact  much  like  the  science  of  war.  Nothing  is 
simpler  or  more  definite  than  the  principles  of 
either.  In  war,  all  you  have  to  do  is  to  work  your 
enemy  into  a  position  from  which  the  natural  ob- 
stacles prevent  him  from  escaping  if  he  tries  to ; 
then  to  fall  on  him  in  numbers  superior  to  his 
own,  at  a  moment  when  you  have  led  him  to  think 
you  far  away ;  and  so,  with  a  minimum  of  expos- 
ure of  your  own  troops,  to  hack  his  force  to  pieces, 


10  TALKS  TO  TEACHBES 

and  take  the  remainder  prisoners.  Just  so,  in 
teaching,  you  must  simply  work  your  pupil  into 
such  a  state  of  interest  in  what  you  are  going  to 
teach  him  that  every  other  object  of  attention  is 
banished  from  his  mind ;  then  reveal  it  to  him  so 
impressively  that  he  will  remember  the  occasion 
to  his  dying  day ;  and  finally  fill  him  with  devour- 
ing curiosity  to  know  what  the  next  steps  in  con- 
nection with  the  subject  are.  The  principles  being 
so  plain,  there  would  be  nothing  but  victories  for 
the  masters  of  the  science,  either  on  the  battlefield 
or  in  the  schoolroom,  if  they  did  not  both  have  to 
make  their  application  to  an  incalculable  quantity 
in  the  shape  of  the  mind  of  their  opponent.  The 
mind  of  your  own  enemy,  the  pupil,  is  working 
away  from  you  as  keenly  and  eagerly  as  is  the 
mind  of  the  commander  on  the  other  side  from  the 
scientific  general.  Just  what  the  respective  ene- 
mies want  and  think,  and  what  they  know  and  do 
not  know,  are  as  hard  things  for  the  teacher  as 
for  the  general  to  find  out.  Divination  and  per- 
ception, not  psychological  pedagogics  or  theoretic 
strategy,  are  the  only  helpers  here. 

But,  if  the  use  of  psychological  principles  thus 
be  negative  rather  than  positive,  it  does  not  follow 
that  it  may  not  be  a  great  use,  all  the  same.  It 


HOW   PSYCHOLOGY   SHEDS   LIGHT  11 

certainly  narrows  the  path  for  experiments  and 
trials.  We  know  in  advance,  if  we  are  psycholo- 
gist, that  certain  methods  will  be  wrong,  so  our 
psychology  saves  us  from  mistakes.  It  makes  us, 
moreover,  more  clear  as  to  what  we  are  about. 
We  gain  confidence  in  respect  to  any  method 
which  we  are  using  as  soon  as  we  believe  that 
it  has  theory  as  well  as  practice  at  its  back. 
Most  of  all,  it  fructifies  our  independence,  and 
it  reanimates  our  interest,  to  see  our  subject  at 
two  different  angles, —  to  get  a  stereoscopic  view, 
so  to  speak,  of  the  youthful  organism  who  is  our 
enemy,  and,  while  handling  him  with  all  our  con- 
crete tact  and  divination,  to  be  able,  at  the  same 
time,  to  represent  to  ourselves  the  curious  inner 
elements  of  his  mental  machine.  Such  a  complete 
knowledge  as  this  of  the  pupil,  at  once  intuitive 
and  analytic,  is  surely  the  knowledge  at  which 
every  teacher  ought  to  aim. 

Fortunately  for  you  teachers,  the  elements  of 
the  mental  machine  can  be  clearly  apprehended, 
and  their  workings  easily  grasped.  And,  as  the 
most  general  elements  and  workings  are  just  those 
parts  of  psychology  which  the  teacher  finds  most 
directly  useful,  it  follows  that  the  amount  of  this 
science  which  is  necessary  to  all  teachers  need  not 


12  TALKS   TO   TEACHERS 

be  very  great.  Those  who  find  themselves  loving 
the  subject  may  go  as  far  as  they  please,  and  be- 
come possibly  none  the  worse  teachers  for  the  fact, 
even  though  in  some  of  them  one  might  appre- 
hend a  little  loss  of  balance  from  the  tendency 
observable  in  all  of  us  to  overemphasize  certain 
special  parts  of  a  subject  when  we  are  studying 
it  intensely  and  abstractly.  But  for  the  great 
majority  of  you  a  general  view  is  enough,  pro- 
vided it  be  a  true  one ;  and  such  a  general  view, 
one  may  say,  might  almost  be  written  on  the  palm 
of  one's  hand. 

Least  of  all  need  you,  merely  as  teachers,  deem 
it  part  of  your  duty  to  become  contributors  to 
psychological  science  or  to  make  psychological 
observations  in  a  methodical  or  responsible  man- 
ner. I  fear  that  some  of  the  enthusiasts  for  child- 
study  have  thrown  a  certain  burden  on  you  in  this 
way.  By  all  means  let  child-study  go  on, —  it  is 
refreshing  all  our  sense  of  the  child's  life.  There 
are  teachers  who  take  a  spontaneous  delight  in 
filling  syllabuses,  inscribing  observations,  compil- 
ing statistics,  and  computing  the  per  cent.  Child- 
study  will  certainly  enrich  their  lives.  And,  if  its 
results,  as  treated  statistically,  would  seem  on  the 
whole  to  have  but  trifling  value,  yet  the  anecdotes 


CHILD-STUDY  13 

and  observations  of  which  it  in  part  consists  do 
certainly  acquaint  us  more  intimately  with  our 
pupils.  Our  eyes  and  ears  grow  quickened  to 
discern  in  the  child  before  us  processes  similar  to 
those  we  have  read  of  as  noted  in  the  children, — 
processes  of  which  we  might  otherwise  have  re- 
mained inobservant.  But,  for  Heaven's  sake,  let 
the  rank  and  file  of  teachers  be  passive  readers  if 
they  so  prefer,  and  feel  free  not  to  contribute  to 
the  accumulation.  Let  not  the  prosecution  of  it 
be  preached  as  an  imperative  duty  or  imposed  by 
regulation  on  those  to  whom  it  proves  an  exter- 
minating bore,  or  who  in  any  way  whatever  miss 
in  themselves  the  appropriate  vocation  for  it.  I 
cannot  too  strongly  agree  with  my  colleague, 
Professor  Miinsterberg,  when  he  says  that  the 
teacher's  attitude  toward  the  child,  being  concrete 
and  ethical,  is  positively  opposed  to  the  psycho- 
logical observer's,  which  is  abstract  and  analytic. 
Although  some  of  us  may  conjoin  the  attitudes 
successfully,  in  most  of  us  they  must  conflict. 

The  worst  thing  that  can  happen  to  a  good 
teacher  is  to  get  a  bad  conscience  about  her  pro- 
fession because  she  feels  herself  hopeless  as  a  psy- 
chologist. Our  teachers  are  overworked  already. 
Every  one  who  adds  a  jot  or  tittle  of  unnecessary 


14  TALKS  TO  TEACHERS 

weight  to  their  burden  is  a  foe  of  education.  A 
bad  conscience  increases  the  weight  of  every  other 
burden;  yet  I  know  that  child-study,  and  other 
pieces  of  psychology  as  well,  have  been  productive 
of  bad  conscience  in  many  a  really  innocent  ped- 
agogic breast.  I  should  indeed  be  glad  if  this 
passing  word  from  me  might  tend  to  dispel  such 
a  bad  conscience,  if  any  of  you  have  it;  for  it 
is  certainly  one  of  those  fruits  of  more  or  less 
systematic  mystification  of  which  I  have  already 
complained.  The  best  teacher  may  be  the  poorest 
contributor  of  child-study  material,  and  the  best 
contributor  may  be  the  poorest  teacher.  No  fact 
is  more  palpable  than  this. 

So  much  for  what  seems  the  most  reasonable 
general  attitude  of  the  teacher  toward  the  subject 
which  is  to  occupy  our  attention. 


II. 

THE  STREAM  OF  CONSCIOUSNESS 

I  SAID  a  few  minutes  ago  that  the  most  general 
elements  and  workings  of  the  mind  are  all  that 
the  teacher  absolutely  needs  to  be  acquainted  with 
for  his  purposes. 

Now  the  immediate  fact  which  psychology,  the 
science  of  mind,  has  to  study  is  also  the  most 
general  fact.  It  is  the  fact  that  in  each  of  us, 
when  awake  (and  often  when  asleep),  some  kind 
of  consciousness  is  always  going  on.  There  is  a 
stream,  a  succession  of  states,  or  waves,  or  fields 
(or  of  whatever  you  please  to  call  them),  of 
knowledge,  of  feeling,  of  desire,  of  deliberation, 
etc.,  that  constantly  pass  and  repass,  and  that  con- 
stitute our  inner  life.  The  existence  of  this  stream 
is  the  primal  fact,  the  nature  and  origin  of  it  form 
the  essential  problem,  of  our  science.  So  far  as 
we  class  the  states  or  fields  of  consciousness,  write 
down  their  several  natures,  analyze  their  contents 
into  elements,  or  trace  their  habits  of  succession, 


16  TALKS  TO   TEACHEKS 

we  are  on  the  descriptive  or  analytic  level.  So 
far  as  we  ask  where  they  come  from  or  why  they 
are  just  what  they  are,  we  are  on  the  explanatory 
level. 

In  these  talks  with  you,  I  shall  entirely  neglect 
the  questions  that  come  up  on  the  explanatory 
level.  It  must  be  frankly  confessed  that  in  no 
fundamental  sense  do  we  know  where  our  succes- 
sive fields  of  consciousness  come  from,  or  why 
they  have  the  precise  inner  constitution  which 
they  do  have.  They  certainly  follow  or  accom- 
pany our  brain  states,  and  of  course  their  special 
forms  are  determined  by  our  past  experiences  and 
education.  But,  if  we  ask  just  how  the  brain  con- 
ditions them,  we  have  not  the  remotest  inkling  of 
an  answer  to  give ;  and,  if  we  ask  just  how  the 
education  moulds  the  brain,  we  can  speak  but  in 
the  most  abstract,  general,  and  conjectural  terms. 
On  the  other  hand,  if  we  should  say  that  they  are 
due  to  a  spiritual  being  called  our  Soul,  which 
reacts  on  our  brain  states  by  these  peculiar  forms 
of  spiritual  energy,  our  words  would  be  familiar 
enough,  it  is  true ;  but  I  think  you  will  agree  that 
they  would  offer  little  genuine  explanatory  mean- 
ing. The  truth  is  that  we  really  do  not  know  the 
answers  to  the  problems  on  the  explanatory  level, 


OUR   STREAM   OF   CONSCIOUSNESS  17 

even  though  in  some  directions  of  inquiry  there 
may  be  promising  speculations  to  be  found.  For 
our  present  purposes  I  shall  therefore  dismiss  them 
entirely,  and  turn  to  mere  description.  This  state 
of  things  was  what  I  had  in  mind  when,  a  moment 
ago,  I  said  there  was  no  '  new  psychology '  worthy 
of  the  name. 

We  have  thus  fields  of  consciousness, —  that  is  the 
first  general  fact ;  and  the  second  general  fact  is 
that  the  concrete  fields  are  always  complex.  They 
contain  sensations  of  our  bodies  and  of  the  ob- 
jects around  us,  memories  of  past  experiences  and 
thoughts  of  distant  things,  feelings  of  satisfaction 
and  dissatisfaction,  desires  and  aversions,  and  other 
emotional  conditions,  together  with  determinations 
of  the  will,  in  every  variety  of  permutation  and 
combination. 

In  most  of  our  concrete  states  of  consciousness 
all  these  different  classes  of  ingredients  are  found 
simultaneously  present  to  some  degree,  though  the 
relative  proportion  they  bear  to  one  another  is 
very  shifting.  One  state  will  seem  to  be  com- 
posed of  hardly  anything  but  sensations,  another 
of  hardly  anything  but  memories,  etc.  But  around 
the  sensation,  if  one  consider  carefully,  there  will 
always  be  some  fringe  of  thought  or  will,  and 


18  TALKS   TO  TEACHERS 

around  the  memory  some  margin  or  penumbra  of 
emotion  or  sensation. 

In  most  of  our  fields  of  consciousness  there  is  a 
core  of  sensation  that  is  very  pronounced.  You, 
for  example,  now,  although  you  are  also  thinking 
and  feeling,  are  getting  through  your  eyes  sensa- 
tions of  my  face  and  figure,  and  through  your  ears 
sensations  of  my  voice.  The  sensations  are  the 
centre  or  focus,  the  thoughts  and  feelings  the  mar- 
gin, of  your  actually  present  conscious  field. 

On  the  other  hand,  some  object  of  thought, 
some  distant  image,  may  have  become  the  focus 
of  your  mental  attention  even  while  I  am  speak- 
ing,—  your  mind,  in  short,  may  have  wandered 
from  the  lecture ;  and,  in  that  case,  the  sensations 
of  my  face  and  voice,  although  not  absolutely 
vanishing  from  your  conscious  field,  may  have 
taken  up  there  a  very  faint  and  marginal  place. 

Again,  to  take  another  sort  of  variation,  some 
feeling  connected  with  your  own  body  may  have 
passed  from  a  marginal  to  a  focal  place,  even 
while  I  speak. 

The  expressions  '  focal  object '  and  '  marginal 
object,'  which  we  owe  to  Mr.  Lloyd  Morgan,  re- 
quire, I  think,  no  further  explanation.  The  dis- 
tinction they  embody  is  a  very  important  one,  and 


THE   FIELDS   OF   CONSCIOUSNESS  19 

they  are  the  first  technical  terms  which  I  shall  ask 
you  to  remember. 

In  the  successive  mutations  of  our  fields  of  con- 
sciousness, the  process  by  which  one  dissolves  into 
another  is  often  very  gradual,  and  all  sorts  of 
inner  rearrangements  of  contents  occur.  Some- 
times the  focus  remains  but  little  changed,  while 
the  margin  alters  rapidly.  Sometimes  the  focus 
alters,  and  the  margin  stays.  Sometimes  focus 
and  margin  change  places.  Sometimes,  again, 
abrupt  alterations  of  the  whole  field  occur. 
There  can  seldom  be  a  sharp  description.  All 
we  know  is  that,  for  the  most  part,  each  field  has 
a  sort  of  practical  unity  for  its  possessor,  and  that 
from  this  practical  point  of  view  we  can  class  a 
field  with  other  fields  similar  to  it,  by  calling  it 
a  state  of  emotion,  of  perplexity,  of  sensation,  of 
abstract  thought,  of  volition,  and  the  like. 

Vague  and  hazy  as  such  an  account  of  our 
stream  of  consciousness  may  be,  it  is  at  least  se- 
cure from  positive  error  and  free  from  admixture 
of  conjecture  or  hypothesis.  An  influential  school 
of  psychology,  seeking  to  avoid  haziness  of  out- 
line, has  tried  to  make  things  appear  more  exact 
and  scientific  by  making  the  analysis  more  sharp. 


20  TALKS   TO   TEACHEBS 

The  various  fields  of  consciousness,  according  to 
this  school,  result  from  a  definite  number  of  per- 
fectly definite  elementary  mental  states,  mechani- 
cally associated  into  a  mosaic  or  chemically  com- 
bined. According  to  some  thinkers, —  Spencer, 
for  example,  or  Taine, —  these  resolve  themselves 
at  last  into  little  elementary  psychic  particles  or 
atoms  of  *  mind-stuff,'  out  of  which  all  the  more 
immediately  known  mental  states  are  said  to  be 
built  up.  Locke  introduced  this  theory  in  a 
somewhat  vague  form.  Simple  'ideas'  of  sensa- 
tion and  reflection,  as  he  called  them,  were  for 
him  the  bricks  of  which  our  mental  architecture 
is  built  up.  If  I  ever  have  to  refer  to  this  theory 
again,  I  shall  refer  to  it  as  the  theory  of  'ideas.' 
But  I  shall  try  to  steer  clear  of  it  altogether. 
Whether  it  be  true  or  false,  it  is  at  any  rate  only 
conjectural;  and,  for  your  practical  purposes  as 
teachers,  the  more  unpretending  conception  of  the 
stream  of  consciousness,  with  its  total  waves  or 
fields  incessantly  changing,  will  amply  suffice.* 

*  In  the  light  of  some  of  the  expectation  that  are  abroad  concern- 
ing the  '  new  psychology,'  it  is  instructive  to  read  the  unusually  can- 
did confession  of  its  founder  Wundt,  after  his  thirty  years  of  labora- 
tory-experience : 

"  The  service  which  it  [the  experimental  method]  can  yield  consists 
essentially  in  perfecting  our  inner  observation,  or  rather,  as  I  believe, 


PBOFESSOE  WUNDT'S  VIEWS  21 

in  making  this  really  possible,  in  any  exact  sense.  Well,  has  our 
experimental  self-observation ,  BO  understood,  already  accomplished 
aught  of  importance  ?  No  general  answer  to  this  question  can  be 
given,  because  in  the  unfinished  state  of  our  science,  there  is,  even 
inside  of  the  experimental  lines  of  inquiry,  no  universally  accepted 
body  of  psychologic  doctrine.  . .  . 

« In  such  a  discord  of  opinions  (comprehensible  enough  at  a  time 
of  uncertain  and  groping  development),  the  individual  inquirer  can 
only  tell  for  what  views  and  insights  he  himself  has  to  thank  the 
newer  methods.  And  if  1  were  asked  in  what  for  me  the  worth  of  ex- 
perimental observation  in  psychology  has  consisted,  and  still  consists, 
I  should  say  that  it  has  given  me  an  entirely  new  idea  of  the  nature 
and  connection  of  our  inner  processes.  I  learned  in  the  achievements 
of  the  sense  of  sight  to  apprehend  the  fact  of  creative  mental  synthe- 
sis. . . .  From  my  inquiry  into  time-relations,  etc I  attained  an 

insight  into  the  close  union  of  all  those  psychic  functions  usually  sepa- 
rated by  artificial  abstractions  and  names,  such  as  ideation,  feeling, 
will ;  and  I  saw  the  indivisibility  and  inner  homogeneity,  in  all  its 
phases,  of  the  mental  life.  The  chronometric  study  of  association- 
processes  finally  showed  me  that  the  notion  of  distinct  mental '  images ' 
[reproducirten  Vorttcllungen]  was  one  of  those  numerous  self-decep- 
tions which  are  no  sooner  stamped  in  a  verbal  term  than  they  forth- 
with thrust  non-existent  fictions  into  the  place  of  the  reality.  I 
learned  to  understand  an  '  idea '  as  a  process  no  less  melting  and  fleet- 
ing than  an  act  of  feeling  or  of  will,  and  I  comprehended  the  older 
doctrine  of  association  of '  ideas '  to  be  no  longer  tenable. . . .  Besides 
all  this,  experimental  observation  yielded  much  other  information 
about  the  span  of  consciousness,  the  rapidity  of  certain  processes,  the 
exact  numerical  value  of  certain  psycho-physical  data,  and  the  like. 
But  I  hold  all  these  more  special  results  to  be  relatively  insignificant 
by-products,  and  by  no  means  the  important  thing. "— Phttotophitctie 
Studien,  x.  111-124.  The  whole  passage  should  be  read.  As  I  interpret 
it,  it  amounts  to  a  complete  espousal  of  the  vaguer  conception  of  the 
stream  of  thought,  and  a  complete  renunciation  of  the  whole  business, 
still  so  industriously  carried  on  in  text-books,  of  chopping  up  'the 
mind '  into  distinct  units  of  composition  or  function,  numbering  these 
off,  and  labelling  them  by  technical  names. 


III. 

THE  CHILD  AS  A  BEHAVING  ORGANISM 

I  WISH  now  to  continue  the  description  of  the 
peculiarities  of  the  stream  of  consciousness  by 
asking  whether  we  can  in  any  intelligible  way 
assign  its  functions. 

It  has  two  functions  that  are  obvious :  it  leads 
to  knowledge,  and  it  leads  to  action. 

Can  we  say  which  of  these  functions  is  the 
more  essential? 

An  old  historic  divergence  of  opinion  comes  in 
here.  Popular  belief  has  always  tended  to  esti- 
mate the  worth  of  a  man's  mental  processes  by 
their  effects  upon  his  practical  life.  But  philo- 
sophers have  usually  cherished  a  different  view. 
"  Man's  supreme  glory,"  they  have  said,  "  is  to  be 
a  rational  being,  to  know  absolute  and  eternal  and 
universal  truth.  The  uses  of  his  intellect  for 
practical  affairs  are  therefore  subordinate  matters. 
'The  theoretic  life  '  is  his  soul's  genuine  concern." 
Nothing  can  be  more  different  in  its  results  for 
our  personal  attitude  than  to  take  sides  with  one 


THE  TWO   VIEWS   OF   OUR  MIND  23 

or  the  other  of  these  views,  and  emphasize  the 
practical  or  the  theoretical  ideal.  In  the  latter 
case,  abstraction  from  the  emotions  and  passions 
and  withdrawal  from  the  strife  of  human  affairs 
would  be  not  only  pardonable,  but  praiseworthy ; 
and  all  that  makes  for  quiet  and  contemplation 
should  be  regarded  as  conducive  to  the  highest 
human  perfection.  In  the  former,  the  man  of  con- 
templation would  be  treated  as  only  half  a  human 
being,  passion  and  practical  resource  would  be- 
come once  more  glories  of  our  race,  a  concrete 
victory  over  this  earth's  outward  powers  of  dark- 
ness would  appear  an  equivalent  for  any  amount 
of  passive  spiritual  culture,  and  conduct  would 
remain  as  the  test  of  every  education  worthy  of 
the  name. 

It  is  impossible  to  disguise  the  fact  that  in  the 
psychology  of  our  own  day  the  emphasis  is  trans- 
ferred from  the  mind's  purely  rational  function, 
where  Plato  and  Aristotle,  and  what  one  may  call 
the  whole  classic  tradition  in  philosophy  had 
placed  it,  to  the  so  long  neglected  practical  side. 
The  theory  of  evolution  is  mainly  responsible  for 
this.  Man,  we  now  have  reason  to  believe,  has 
been  evolved  from  infra-human  ancestors,  in  whom 
pure  reason  hardly  existed,  if  at  all,  and  whose 


24  TALKS   TO   TEACHERS 

mind,  so  far  as  it  can  have  had  any  function, 
would  appear  to  have  been  an  organ  for  adapting 
their  movements  to  the  impressions  received  from 
the  environment,  so  as  to  escape  the  better  from 
destruction.  Consciousness  would  thus  seem  in 
the  first  instance  to  be  nothing  but  a  sort  of  super- 
added  biological  perfection, —  useless  unless  it 
prompted  to  useful  conduct,  and  inexplicable 
apart  from  that  consideration. 

Deep  in  our  own  nature  the  biological  founda- 
tions of  our  consciousness  persist,  undisguised  and 
undiminished.  Our  sensations  are  here  to  attract 
us  or  to  deter  us,  our  memories  to  warn  or  encour- 
age us,  our  feelings  to  impel,  and  our  thoughts  to 
restrain  our  behavior,  so  that  on  the  whole  we 
may  prosper  and  our  days  be  long  in  the  land. 
Whatever  of  transmundane  metaphysical  insight 
or  of  practically  inapplicable  aesthetic  perception 
or  ethical  sentiment  we  may  carry  in  our  interiors 
might  at  this  rate  be  regarded  as  only  part  of  the 
incidental  excess  of  function  that  necessarily  ac- 
companies the  working  of  every  complex  machine. 

I  shall  ask  you  now  —  not  meaning  at  all 
thereby  to  close  the  theoretic  question,  but  merely 
because  it  seems  to  me  the  point  of  view  likely  to 
be  of  greatest  practical  use  to  you  as  teachers  — 


THE   BIOLOGICAL  VIEW  25 

to  adopt  with  me,  in  this  course  of  lectures,  the 
biological  conception,  as  thus  expressed,  and  to 
lay  your  own  emphasis  on  the  fact  that  man, 
whatever  else  he  may  be,  is  primarily  a  practical 
being,  whose  mind  is  given  him  to  aid  in  adapting 
him  to  this  world's  life. 

In  the  learning  of  all  matters,  we  have  to  start 
with  some  one  deep  aspect  of  the  question,  ab- 
stracting it  as  if  it  were  the  only  aspect ;  and  then 
we  gradually  correct  ourselves  by  adding  those 
neglected  other  features  which  complete  the  case. 
No  one  believes  more  strongly  than  I  do  that 
what  our  senses  know  as  '  this  world '  is  only  one 
portion  of  our  mind's  total  environment  and  ob- 
ject. Yet,  because  it  is  the  primal  portion,  it  is 
the  sine  qua  non  of  all  the  rest.  If  you  grasp  the 
facts  about  it  firmly,  you  may  proceed  to  higher 
regions  undisturbed.  As  our  time  must  be  so 
short  together,  I  prefer  being  elementary  and 
fundamental  to  being  complete,  so  I  propose  to 
you  to  hold  fast  to  the  ultra-simple  point  of 
view. 

The  reasons  why  I  call  it  so  fundamental  can 
be  easily  told. 

First,  human  and  animal  psychology  thereby 
become  less  discontinuous.  I  know  that  to  some 


26  TALKS   TO  TEACHERS 

of  you  this  will  hardly  seem  an  attractive  reason, 
but  there  are  others  whom  it  will  affect. 

Second,  mental  action  is  conditioned  by  brain 
action,  and  runs  parallel  therewith.  But  the 
brain,  so  far  as  we  understand  it,  is  given  us  for 
practical  behavior.  Every  current  that  runs  into 
it  from  skin  or  eye  or  ear  runs  out  again  into 
muscles,  glands,  or  viscera,  and  helps  to  adapt  the 
animal  to  the  environment  from  which  the  current 
came.  It  therefore  generalizes  and  simplifies  our 
view  to  treat  the  brain  life  and  the  mental  life  as 
having  one  fundamental  kind  of  purpose. 

Third,  those  very  functions  of  the  mind  that  do 
not  refer  directly  to  this  world's  environment,  the 
ethical  Utopias,  aesthetic  visions,  insights  into 
eternal  truth,  and  fanciful  logical  combinations, 
could  never  be  carried  on  at  all  by  a  human  indi- 
vidual, unless  the  mind  that  produced  them  in 
him  were  also  able  to  produce  more  practically 
useful  products.  The  latter  are  thus  the  more 
essential,  or  at  least  the  more  primordial  results. 

Fourth,  the  inessential  '  unpractical  '  activities 
are  themselves  far  more  connected  with  our  be- 
havior and  our  adaptation  to  the  environment  than 
at  first  sight  might  appear.  No  truth,  however 
abstract,  is  ever  perceived,  that  will  not  probably 


ALL  CONSCIOUSNESS   LEADS   TO   ACTION       27 

at  some  time  influence  our  earthly  action.  You 
must  remember  that,  when  I  talk  of  action  here, 
I  mean  action  in  the  widest  sense.  I  mean  speech, 
I  mean  writing,  I  mean  yeses  and  noes,  and  ten- 
dencies '  from '  things  and  tendencies  *  toward  * 
things,  and  emotional  determinations  ;  and  I  mean 
them  in  the  future  as  well  as  in  the  immediate 
present.  As  I  talk  here,  and  you  listen,  it  might 
seem  as  if  no  action  followed.  You  might  call  it 
a  purely  theoretic  process,  with  no  practical 
result.  But  it  must  have  a  practical  result.  It 
cannot  take  place  at  all  and  leave  your  conduct 
unaffected.  If  not  to-day,  then  on  some  far  future 
day,  you  will  answer  some  question  differently  by 
reason  of  what  you  are  thinking  now.  Some  of 
you  will  be  led  by  my  words  into  new  veins  of 
inquiry,  into  reading  special  books.  These  will 
develop  your  opinion,  whether  for  or  against. 
That  opinion  will  in  turn  be  expressed,  will  re- 
ceive criticism  from  others  in  your  environment, 
and  will  affect  your  standing  in  their  eyes.  We 
cannot  escape  our  destiny,  which  is  practical ;  and 
even  our  most  theoretic  faculties  contribute  to  its 
working  out. 


28  TALKS   TO   TEACHERS 

These  few  reasons  will  perhaps  smooth  the  way 
for  you  to  acquiescence  in  my  proposal.  As 
teachers,  I  sincerely  think  it  will  be  a  sufficient 
conception  for  you  to  adopt  of  the  youthful  psy- 
chological phenomena  handed  over  to  your  inspec- 
tion if  you  consider  them  from  the  point  of  view 
of  their  relation  to  the  future  conduct  of  their 
possessor.  Sufficient  at  any  rate  as  a  first  con- 
ception and  as  a  main  conception.  You  should 
regard  your  professional  task  as  if  it  consisted 
chiefly  and  essentially  in  training  the  pupil  to  be- 
havior ;  taking  behavior,  not  in  the  narrow  sense 
of  his  manners,  but  in  the  very  widest  possible 
sense,  as  including  every  possible  sort  of  fit  re- 
action on  the  circumstances  into  which  he  may 
find  himself  brought  by  the  vicissitudes  of  life. 

The  reaction  may,  indeed,  often  be  a  negative 
reaction.  Not  to  speak,  not  to  move,  is  one  of  the 
most  important  of  our  duties,  in  certain  practical 
emergencies.  "  Thou  shalt  refrain,  renounce,  ab- 
stain !  "  This  often  requires  a  great  effort  of  will 
power,  and,  physiologically  considered,  is  just  as 
positive  a  nerve  function  as  is  motor  discharge. 


IV. 

EDUCATION  AND  BEHAVIOR 

IN  our  foregoing  talk  we  were  led  to  frame 
a  very  simple  conception  of  what  an  education 
means.  In  the  last  analysis  it  consists  in  the 
organizing  of  resources  in  the  human  being,  of 
powers  of  conduct  which  shall  fit  him  to  his  social 
and  physical  world.  An  4  uneducated '  person  is 
one  who  is  nonplussed  by  all  but  the  most  habitual 
situations.  On  the  contrary,  one  who  is  educated 
is  able  practically  to  extricate  himself,  by  means 
of  the  examples  with  which  his  memory  is  stored 
and  of  the  abstract  conceptions  which  he  has 
acquired,  from  circumstances  in  which  he  never 
was  placed  before.  Education,  in  short,  cannot 
be  better  described  than  by  calling  it  the  organiza- 
tion of  acquired  habits  of  conduct  and  tendencies 
to  behavior. 

To  illustrate.  You  and  I  are  each  and  all  of  us 
educated,  in  our  several  ways ;  and  we  show  our 
education  at  this  present  moment  by  different 
conduct.  It  would  be  quite  impossible  for  me, 


80  TALKS   TO  TEACHERS 

with  my  mind  technically  and  professionally  or- 
ganized as  it  is,  and  with  the  optical  stimulus 
which  your  presence  affords,  to  remain  sitting  here 
entirely  silent  and  inactive.  Something  tells  me 
that  I  am  expected  to  speak,  and  must  speak; 
something  forces  me  to  keep  on  speaking.  My 
organs  of  articulation  are  continuously  innervated 
by  outgoing  currents,  which  the  currents  passing 
inward  at  my  eyes  and  through  my  educated  brain 
have  set  in  motion ;  and  the  particular  movements 
which  they  make  have  their  form  and  order  deter- 
mined altogether  by  the  training  of  all  my  past 
years  of  lecturing  and  reading.  Your  conduct,  on 
the  other  hand,  might  seem  at  first  sight  purely 
receptive  and  inactive, —  leaving  out  those  among 
you  who  happen  to  be  taking  notes.  But  the 
very  listening  which  you  are  carrying  on  is  itself 
a  determinate  kind  of  conduct.  All  the  muscular 
tensions  of  your  body  are  distributed  in  a  peculiar 
way  as  you  listen.  Your  head,  your  eyes,  are 
fixed  characteristically.  And,  when  the  lecture  is 
over,  it  will  inevitably  eventuate  in  some  stroke 
of  behavior,  as  I  said  on  the  previous  occasion: 
you  may  be  guided  differently  in  some  special 
emergency  in  the  schoolroom  by  words  which 
I  now  let  fall. —  So  it  is  with  the  impressions  you 


GERMAN  AND   ENGLISH  IDEALS  31 

will  make  there  on  your  pupil.  You  should  get 
into  the  habit  of  regarding  them  all  as  leading  to 
the  acquisition  by  him  of  capacities  for  behavior, 
—  emotional,  social,  bodily,  vocal,  technical,  or 
what  not.  And,  this  being  the  case,  you  ought 
to  feel  willing,  in  a  general  way,  and  without 
hair-splitting  or  farther  ado,  to  take  up  for  the 
purposes  of  these  lectures  with  the  biological  con- 
ception of  the  mind,  as  of  something  given  us  for 
practical  use.  That  conception  will  certainly  cover 
the  greater  part  of  your  own  educational  work. 

If  we  reflect  upon  the  various  ideals  of  educa- 
tion that  are  prevalent  in  the  different  countries, 
we  see  that  what  they  all  aim  at  is  to  organize 
capacities  for  conduct.  This  is  most  immediately 
obvious  in  Germany,  where  the  explicitly  avowed 
aim  of  the  higher  education  is  to  turn  the  student 
into  an  instrument  for  advancing  scientific  discov- 
ery. The  German  universities  are  proud  of  the 
number  of  young  specialists  whom  they  turn  out 
every  year, —  not  necessarily  men  of  any  original 
force  of  intellect,  but  men  so  trained  to  research 
that  when  their  professor  gives  them  an  historical 
or  philological  thesis  to  prepare,  or  a  bit  of  labora- 
tory work  to  do,  with  a  general  indication  as  to 
the  best  method,  they  can  go  off  by  themselves 


32  TALKS   TO   TEACHERS 

and  use  apparatus  and  consult  sources  in  such 
a  way  as  to  grind  out  in  the  requisite  number 
of  months  some  little  pepper-corn  of  new  truth 
worthy  of  being  added  to  the  store  of  extant  hu- 
man information  on  that  subject.  Little  else  is 
recognized  in  Germany  as  a  man's  title  to  academic 
advancement  than  his  ability  thus  to  show  himself 
an  efficient  instrument  of  research. 

In  England,  it  might  seem  at  first  sight  as  if 
the  higher  education  of  the  universities  aimed  at 
the  production  of  certain  static  types  of  character 
rather  than  at  the  development  of  what  one  may 
call  this  dynamic  scientific  efficiency.  Professor 
Jowett,  when  asked  what  Oxford  could  do  for  its 
students,  is  said  to  have  replied,  "  Oxford  can 
teach  an  English  gentleman  how  to  be  an  English 
gentleman."  But,  if  you  ask  what  it  means  to  '  be ' 
an  English  gentleman,  the  only  reply  is  in  terms 
of  conduct  and  behavior.  An  English  gentleman 
is  a  bundle  of  specifically  qualified  reactions,  a 
creature  who  for  all  the  emergencies  of  life  has 
his  line  of  behavior  distinctly  marked  out  for  him 
in  advance.  Here,  as  elsewhere,  England  expects 
every  man  to  do  his  duty. 


THE  NECESSITY  OF  REACTIONS 

IF  all  this  be  true,  then  immediately  one  general 
aphorism  emerges  which  ought  by  logical  right  to 
dominate  the  entire  conduct  of  the  teacher  in  the 
classroom. 

No  reception  without  reaction,  no  impression  with- 
out correlative  expression, —  this  is  the  great  maxim 
which  the  teacher  ought  never  to  forget. 

An  impression  which  simply  flows  in  at  the 
pupil's  eyes  or  ears,  and  in  no  way  modifies  his 
active  life,  is  an  impression  gone  to  waste.  It  is 
physiologically  incomplete.  It  leaves  no  fruits 
behind  it  in  the  way  of  capacity  acquired.  Even 
as  mere  impression,  it  fails  to  produce  its  proper  ef- 
fect upon  the  memory ;  for,  to  remain  fully  among 
the  acquisitions  of  this  latter  faculty,  it  must  be 
wrought  into  the  whole  cycle  of  our  operations. 
Its  motor  consequences  are  what  clinch  it.  Some 
effect  due  to  it  in  the  way  of  an  activity  must  re- 
turn to  the  mind  in  the  form  of  the  sensation  of 
having  acted,  and  connect  itself  with  the  impres- 
sion. The  most  durable  impressions  are  those  on 


34  TALKS   TO   TEACHERS 

account  of  which  we  speak  or  act,  or  else  are  in- 
wardly convulsed. 

The  older  pedagogic  method  of  learning  things 
by  rote,  and  reciting  them  parrot-like  in  the 
schoolroom,  rested  on  the  truth  that  a  thing 
merely  read  or  heard,  and  never  verbally  repro- 
duced, contracts  the  weakest  possible  adhesion  in 
the  mind.  Verbal  recitation  or  reproduction  is 
thus  a  highly  important  kind  of  reactive  behavior 
on  our  impressions ;  and  it  is  to  be  feared  that,  in 
the  reaction  against  the  old  parrot-recitations  as 
the  beginning  and  end  of  instruction,  the  extreme 
value  of  verbal  recitation  as  an  element  of  com- 
plete training  may  nowadays  be  too  much  for- 
gotten. 

When  we  turn  to  modern  pedagogics,  we  see 
how  enormously  the  field  of  reactive  conduct  has 
been  extended  by  the  introduction  of  all  those 
methods  of  concrete  object  teaching  which  are  the 
glory  of  our  contemporary  schools.  Verbal  reac- 
tions, useful  as  they  are,  are  insufficient.  The 
pupil's  words  may  be  right,  but  the  conceptions 
corresponding  to  them  are  often  direfully  wrong. 
In  a  modern  school,  therefore,  they  form  only  a 
small  part  of  what  the  pupil  is  required  to  do. 
He  must  keep  notebooks,  make  drawings,  plans, 


THE  MANUAL  TRAINING   METHODS  35 

and  maps,  take  measurements,  enter  the  labora- 
tory and  perform  experiments,  consult  authorities, 
and  write  essays.  He  must  do  in  his  fashion 
what  is  often  laughed  at  by  outsiders  when  it  ap- 
pears in  prospectuses  under  the  title  of  *  original 
work,'  but  what  is  really  the  only  possible  train- 
ing for  the  doing  of  original  work  thereafter. 
The  most  colossal  improvement  which  recent  years 
have  seen  in  secondary  education  lies  in  the  in- 
troduction of  the  manual  training  schools;  not 
because  they  will  give  us  a  people  more  handy 
and  practical  for  domestic  life  and  better  skilled 
in  trades,  but  because  they  will  give  us  citizens 
with  an  entirely  different  intellectual  fibre.  La- 
boratory work  and  shop  work  engender  a  habit 
of  observation,  a  knowledge  of  the  difference  be- 
tween accuracy  and  vagueness,  and  an  insight  into 
nature's  complexity  and  into  the  inadequacy  of 
all  abstract  verbal  accounts  of  real  phenomena, 
which,  once  wrought  into  the  mind,  remain  there 
as  lifelong  possessions.  They  confer  precision ; 
because,  if  you  are  doing  a  thing,  you  must  do  it 
definitely  right  or  definitely  wrong.  They  give 
honesty ;  for,  when  you  express  yourself  by  mak- 
ing things,  and  not  by  using  words,  it  becomes 
impossible  to  dissimulate  your  vagueness  or  igno- 


36  TALKS   TO   TEACHEES 

ranee  by  ambiguity.  They  beget  a  habit  of  self- 
reliance  ;  they  keep  the  interest  and  attention 
always  cheerfully  engaged,  and  reduce  the  teach- 
er's disciplinary  functions  to  a  minimum. 

Of  the  various  systems  of  manual  training,  so 
far  as  woodwork  is  concerned,  the  Swedish  Sloyd 
system,  if  I  may  have  an  opinion  on  such  matters, 
seems  to  me  by  far  the  best,  psychologically  con- 
sidered. Manual  training  methods,  fortunately, 
are  being  slowly  but  surely  introduced  into  all 
our  large  cities.  But  there  is  still  an  immense 
distance  to  traverse  before  they  shall  have  gained 
the  extension  which  they  are  destined  ultimately 
to  possess. 

No  impression  without  expression,  then, —  that 
is  the  first  pedagogic  fruit  of  our  evolutionary 
conception  of  the  mind  as  something  instrumental 
to  adaptive  behavior.  But  a  word  may  be  said 
in  continuation.  The  expression  itself  comes  back 
to  us,  as  I  intimated  a  moment  ago,  in  the  form  of 
a  still  farther  impression, —  the  impression,  namely, 
of  what  we  have  done.  We  thus  receive  sensible 
news  of  our  behavior  and  its  results.  We  hear 
the  words  we  have  spoken,  feel  our  own  blow  as 
we  give  it,  or  read  in  the  bystander's  eyes  the 
success  or  failure  of  our  conduct.  Now  this  re- 


MARKS   AND   STANDING  37 

turn  wave  of  impression  pertains  to  the  complete- 
ness of  the  whole  experience,  and  a  word  about 
its  importance  in  the  schoolroom  may  not  be  out 
of  place. 

It  would  seem  only  natural  to  say  that,  since 
after  acting  we  normally  get  some  return  impres- 
sion of  result,  it  must  be  well  to  let  the  pupil  get 
such  a  return  impression  in  every  possible  case. 
Nevertheless,  in  schools  where  examination  marks 
and  '  standing '  and  other  returns  of  result  are 
concealed,  the  pupil  is  frustrated  of  this  natural 
termination  of  the  cycle  of  his  activities,  and  often 
suffers  from  the  sense  of  incompleteness  and  un- 
certainty ;  and  there  are  persons  who  defend  this 
system  as  encouraging  the  pupil  to  work  for  the 
work's  sake,  and  not  for  extraneous  reward.  Of 
course,  here  as  elsewhere,  concrete  experience 
must  prevail  over  psychological  deduction.  But, 
so  far  as  our  psychological  deduction  goes,  it 
would  suggest  that  the  pupil's  eagerness  to  know 
how  well  he  does  is  in  the  line  of  his  normal 
completeness  of  function,  and  should  never  be 
balked  except  for  very  definite  reasons  indeed. 

Acquaint  them,  therefore,  with  their  marks  and 
standing  and  prospects,  unless  in  the  individual 
case  you  have  some  special  practical  reason  for 
not  so  doing. 


VI. 

NATIVE  REACTIONS  AND  ACQUIRED  RE- 
ACTIONS fc 

WE  are  by  this  time  fully  launched  upon  the 
biological  conception.  Man  is  an  organism  for 
reacting  on  impressions:  his  mind  is  there  to 
help  determine  his  reactions,  and  the  purpose  of 
his  education  is  to  make  them  numerous  and  per- 
fect. Our  education  means,  in  short,  little  more 
than  a  mass  of  possibilities  of  reaction,  acquired  at 
home,  at  school,  or  in  the  training  of  affairs.  The 
teacher's  task  is  that  of  supervising  the  acquiring 
process. 

This  being  the  case,  I  will  immediately  state  a 
principle  which  underlies  the  whole  process  of 
acquisition  and  governs  the  entire  activity  of  the 
teacher.  It  is  this :  — 

Every  acquired  reaction  is,  as  a  rule,  either  a 
complication  grafted  on  a  native  reaction,  or  a  sub- 
stitute for  a  native  reaction,  which  the  same  object 
originally  tended  to  provoke. 

The  teacher's  art  consists  in  bringing  about  the 


NATIVE   AND   ACQUIRED   REACTIONS  39 

substitution  or  complication,  and  success  in  the  art 
presupposes  a  sympathetic  acquaintance  with  the 
reactive  tendencies  natively  there. 

Without  an  equipment  of  native  reactions  on 
the  child's  part,  the  teacher  would  have  no  hold 
whatever  upon  the  child's  attention  or  conduct. 
You  may  take  a  horse  to  the  water,  but  you  can- 
not make  him  drink ;  and  so  you  may  take  a  child 
to  the  schoolroom,  but  you  cannot  make  him  learn 
the  new  things  you  wish  to  impart,  except  by 
soliciting  him  in  the  first  instance  by  something 
which  natively  makes  him  react.  He  must  take 
the  first  step  himself.  He  must  do  something 
before  you  can  get  your  purchase  on  him.  That 
something  may  be  something  good  or  something 
bad.  A  bad  reaction  is  better  than  no  reaction 
at  all ;  for,  if  bad,  you  can  couple  it  with  conse- 
quences which  awake  him  to  its  badness.  But 
imagine  a  child  so  lifeless  as  to  react  in  no  way 
to  the  teacher's  first  appeals,  and  how  can  you 
possibly  take  the  first  step  in  his  education? 

To  make  this  abstract  conception  more  con- 
crete, assume  the  case  of  a  young  child's  training 
in  good  manners.  The  child  has  a  native  ten- 
dency to  snatch  with  his  hands  at  anything  that 
attracts  his  curiosity ;  also  to  draw  back  his  hands 


40  TALKS  TO   TEACHERS 

when  slapped,  to  cry  under  these  latter  conditions, 
to  smile  when  gently  spoken  to,  and  to  imitate 
one's  gestures. 

Suppose  now  you  appear  before  the  child  with 
a  new  toy  intended  as  a  present  for  him.  No 
sooner  does  he  see  the  toy  than  he  seeks  to  snatch 
it.  You  slap  the  hand;  it  is  withdrawn,  and  the 
child  cries.  You  then  hold  up  the  toy,  smiling 
and  saying,  "  Beg  for  it  nicely, —  so ! "  The  child 
stops  crying,  imitates  you,  receives  the  toy,  and 
crows  with  pleasure ;  and  that  little  cycle  of  train- 
ing is  complete.  You  have  substituted  the  new 
reaction  of  'begging'  for  the  native  reaction  of 
snatching,  when  that  kind  of  impression  comes. 

Now,  if  the  child  had  no  memory,  the  process 
would  not  be  educative.  No  matter  how  often 
you  came  in  with  a  toy,  the  same  series  of  reac- 
tions would  fatally  occur,  each  called  forth  by  its 
own  impression :  see,  snatch ;  slap,  cry ;  hear, 
ask;  receive,  smile  But,  with  memory  there,  the 
child,  at  the  very  instant  of  snatching,  recalls  the 
rest  of  the  earlier  experience,  thinks  of  the  slap 
and  the  frustration,  recollects  the  begging  and  the 
reward,  inhibits  the  snatching  impulse,  substitutes 
the  '  nice '  reaction  for  it,  and  gets  the  toy  immedi- 
ately, by  eliminating  all  the  intermediary  steps.  If 


NATIVE   AND   ACQUIRED   REACTIONS 


41 


a  child's  first  snatching  impulse  be  excessive  or  his 
memory  poor,  many  repetitions  of  the  discipline 
may  be  needed  before  the  acquired  reaction  comes 
to  be  an  ingrained  habit;  but  in  an  eminently 
educable  child  a  single  experience  will  suffice. 

One  can  easily  represent  the  whole  process  by  a 
brain-diagram.  Such  a  diagram  can  be  little  more 
than  a  symbolic  translation  of  the  immediate  ex- 
perience into  spatial  terms ;  yet  it  may  be  useful, 
so  I  subjoin  it. 

CENTRES  OF  MEMORY  AND  WILL. 


See    —    snatch         Slap    —    cry        Listen    —    beg         Get    —    smile 
FIGURE  L    THE  BRAIN-PROCESSES  BEFORE  EDUCATION. 

Figure  1  shows  the  paths  of  the  four  successive 
reflexes  executed  by  the  lower  or  instinctive 
centres.  The  dotted  lines  that  lead  from  them  to 
the  higher  centres  and  connect  the  latter  to- 


42 


TALKS   TO   TBACHEES 


gether,  represent  the  processes  of  memory  and  as- 
sociation which  the  reactions  impress  upon  the 
higher  centres  as  they  take  place. 


CENTRES  OF  MEMORY  AND  WILL. 


See—  beg  smile 

FIGURE  2.    THE  BRAIN-PROCESS  AFTER  EDUCATION. 

In  Figure  2  we  have  the  final  result.  The  im- 
pression see  awakens  the  chain  of  memories,  and 
the  only  reactions  that  take  place  are  the  beg  and 
smile.  The  thought  of  the  slap,  connected  with 
the  activity  of  Centre  2,  inhibits  the  snatch,  and 
makes  it  abortive,  so  it  is  represented  only  by 
a  dotted  line  of  discharge  not  reaching  the  termi- 
nus. Ditto  of  the  cry  reaction.  These  are,  as 
it  were,  short-circuited  by  the  current  sweeping 
through  the  higher  centres  from  see  to  smile. 
Beg  and  smile,  thus  substituted  for  the  original 


MAN'S  NUMEROUS  INSTINCTS  43 

reaction  snatch,  become  at  last  the  immediate  re- 
sponses when  the  child  sees  a  snatchable  object  in 
some  one's  hands. 

The  first  thing,  then,  for  the  teacher  to  under- 
stand is  the  native  reactive  tendencies, —  the  im- 
pulses and  instincts  of  childhood, —  so  aa  to  be 
able  to  substitute  one  for  another,  and  turn  them 
on  to  artificial  objects. 

It  is  often  said  that  man  is  distinguished  from 
the  lower  animals  by  having  a  much  smaller  as- 
sortment of  native  instincts  and  impulses  than 
they,  but  this  is  a  great  mistake.  Man,  of  course, 
has  not  the  marvellous  egg-laying  instincts  which 
some  articulates  have;  but,  if  we  compare  him 
with  the  mammalia,  we  are  forced  to  confess  that 
he  is  appealed  to  by  a  much  larger  array  of  objects 
than  any  other  mammal,  that  his  reactions  on 
these  objects  are  characteristic  and  determinate  in 
a  very  high  degree.  The  monkeys,  and  especially 
the  anthropoids,  are  the  only  beings  that  approach 
him  in  their  analytic  curiosity  and  width  of  imi- 
tativeness.  His  instinctive  impulses,  it  is  true, 
get  overlaid  by  the  secondary  reactions  due  to  his 
superior  reasoning  power ;  and  thus  man  loses  the 
simply  instinctive  demeanor.  But  the  life  of  in- 


44  TALKS   TO   TEACHERS 

stinct  is  only  disguised  in  him,  not  lost;  and 
when  the  higher  brain-functions  are  in  abeyance, 
as  happens  in  imbecility  or  dementia,  his  instincts 
sometimes  show  their  presence  in  truly  brutish 
ways. 

I  will  therefore  say  a  few  words  about  those 
instinctive  tendencies  which  are  the  most  impor- 
tant from  the  teacher's  point  of  view. 


VII. 

WHAT  THE  NATIVE  REACTIONS   ARE 

FIRST  of  all,  Fear.  Fear  of  punishment  has 
always  been  the  great  weapon  of  the  teacher,  and 
will  always,  of  course,  retain  some  place  in  the 
conditions  of  the  schoolroom.  The  subject  is  so 
familiar  that  nothing  more  need  be  said  about  it. 

The  same  is  true  of  Love,  and  the  instinctive 
desire  to  please  those  whom  we  love.  The  teacher 
who  succeeds  in  getting  herself  loved  by  the 
pupils  will  obtain  results  which  one  of  a  more 
forbidding  temperament  finds  it  impossible  to 
secure. 

Next,  a  word  might  be  said  about  Curiosity. 
This  is  perhaps  a  rather  poor  term  by  which  to 
designate  the  impulse  toward  better  cognition  in  its 
full  extent ;  but  you  will  readily  understand  what 
I  mean.  Novelties  in  the  way  of  sensible  objects, 
especially  if  their  sensational  quality  is  bright, 
vivid,  startling,  invariably  arrest  the  attention  of 
the  young  and  hold  it  until  the  desire  to  know 
more  about  the  object  is  assuaged.  In  its  higher, 


46  TALKS   TO   TEACHERS 

more  intellectual  form,  the  impulse  toward  com- 
pleter  knowledge  takes  the  character  of  scientific 
or  philosophic  curiosity.  In  both  its  sensational  and 
its  intellectual  form  the  instinct  is  more  vivacious 
during  childhood  and  youth  than  in  after  life. 
Young  children  are  possessed  by  curiosity  about 
every  new  impression  that  assails  them.  It  would 
be  quite  impossible  for  a  young  child  to  listen  to 
a  lecture  for  more  than  a  few  minutes,  as  you  are 
now  listening  to  me.  The  outside  sights  and 
sounds  would  inevitably  carry  his  attention  off. 
And,  for  most  people  in  middle  life,  the  sort  of 
intellectual  effort  required  of  the  average  school- 
boy in  mastering  his  Greek  or  Latin  lesson,  his 
algebra  or  physics,  would  be  out  of  the  question. 
The  middle-aged  citizen  attends  exclusively  to  the 
routine  details  of  his  business ;  and  new  truths, 
especially  when  they  require  involved  trains  of 
close  reasoning,  are  no  longer  within  the  scope  of 
his  capacity. 

The  sensational  curiosity  of  childhood  is  ap- 
pealed to  more  particularly  by  certain  determinate 
kinds  of  objects.  Material  things,  things  that 
move,  living  things,  human  actions  and  accounts 
of  human  action,  will  win  the  attention  better  than 
anything  that  is  more  abstract.  Here  again  comes 


CURIOSITY  47 

in  the  advantage  of  the  object-teaching  and  manual- 
training  methods.  The  pupil's  attention  is  spon- 
taneously held  by  any  problem  that  involves  the 
presentation  of  a  new  material  object  or  of  an 
activity  on  any  one's  part.  The  teacher's  earliest 
appeals,  therefore,  must  be  through  objects  shown 
or  acts  performed  or  described.  Theoretic  curios- 
ity, curiosity  about  the  rational  relations  between 
things,  can  hardly  be  said  to  awake  at  all  until 
adolescence  is  reached.  The  sporadic  metaphysical 
inquiries  of  children  as  to  who  made  God,  and  why 
they  have  five  fingers,  need  hardly  be  counted 
here.  But,  when  the  theoretic  instinct  is  once 
alive  in  the  pupil,  an  entirely  new  order  of  peda- 
gogic relations  begins  for  him.  Reasons,  causes, 
abstract  conceptions,  suddenly  grow  full  of  zest,  a 
fact  with  which  all  teachers  are  familiar.  And, 
both  in  its  sensible  and  in  its  rational  developments, 
disinterested  curiosity  may  be  successfully  appealed 
to  in  the  child  with  much  more  certainty  than  in 
the  adult,  in  whom  this  intellectual  instinct  has 
grown  so  torpid  as  usually  never  to  awake  unless 
it  enters  into  association  with  some  selfish  personal 
interest.  Of  this  latter  point  I  will  say  more 
anon. 


48  TALKS   TO   TEACHERS 

Imitation.  Man  has  always  been  recognized  as 
the  imitative  animal  par  excellence.  And  there  is 
hardly  a  book  on  psycholog}r,  however  old,  which 
has  not  devoted  at  least  one  paragraph  to  this 
fact.  It  is  strange,  however,  that  the  full  scope 
and  pregnancy  of  the  imitative  impulse  in  man 
has  had  to  wait  till  the  last  dozen  years  to  become 
adequately  recognized.  M.  Tarde  led  the  way  in 
his  admirably  original  work,  "  Les  Lois  de  Tlmita- 
tion  " ;  and  in  our  own  country  Professors  Royce 
and  Baldwin  have  kept  the  ball  rolling  with  all 
the  energy  that  could  be  desired.  Each  of  us  is 
in  fact  what  he  is  almost  exclusively  by  virtue  of 
his  imitativeness.  We  become  conscious  of  what 
we  ourselves  are  by  imitating  others  —  the  con- 
sciousness of  what  the  others  are  precedes  —  the 
sense  of  self  grows  by  the  sense  of  pattern. 
The  entire  accumulated  wealth  of  mankind  — 
languages,  arts,  institutions,  and  sciences  —  is 
passed  on  from  one  generation  to  another  by  what 
Baldwin  has  called  social  heredity,  each  genera- 
tion simply  imitating  the  last.  Into  the  particu- 
lars of  this  most  fascinating  chapter  of  psychology 
I  have  no  time  to  go.  The  moment  one  hears 
Tarde's  proposition  uttered,  however,  one  feels 
how  supremely  true  it  is.  Invention,  using  the 


IMITATION  AND   EMULATION  49 

term  most  broadly,  and  imitation,  are  the  two 
legs,  so  to  call  them,  on  which  the  human  race 
historically  has  walked. 

Imitation  shades  imperceptibly  into  Emulation. 
Emulation  is  the  impulse  to  imitate  what  you  see 
another  doing,  in  order  not  to  appear  inferior;  and 
it  is  hard  to  draw  a  sharp  line  between  the  mani- 
festations of  the  two  impulses,  so  inextricably  do 
they  mix  their  effects.  Emulation  is  the  very 
nerve  of  human  society.  "Why  are  you,  my  hear- 
ers, sitting  here  before  me  ?  If  no  one  whom  you 
ever  heard  of  had  attended  a  '  summer  school '  or 
teachers'  institute,  would  it  have  occurred  to  any 
one  of  you  to  break  out  independently  and  do  a 
thing  so  unprescribed  by  fashion  ?  Probably  not. 
Nor  would  your  pupils  come  to  you  unless  the 
children  of  their  parents'  neighbors  were  all  simul- 
taneously being  sent  to  school.  We  wish  not  to 
be  lonely  or  eccentric,  and  we  wish  not  to  be  cut 
off  from  our  share  in  things  which  to  our  neigh- 
bors seem  desirable  privileges. 

In  the  schoolroom,  imitation  and  emulation  play 
absolutely  vital  parts.  Every  teacher  knows  the 
advantage  of  having  certain  things  performed  by 
whole  bands  of  children  at  a  time.  The  teacher 
who  meets  with  most  success  is  the  teacher  whose 


50  TALKS   TO   TEACHEES 

own  ways  are  the  most  imitable.  A  teacher 
should  never  try  to  make  the  pupils  do  a  thing 
which  she  cannot  do  herself.  "  Come  and  let  me 
show  you  how  "  is  an  incomparably  better  stimu- 
lus than  "Go  and  do  it  as  the  book  directs." 
Children  admire  a  teacher  who  has  skill.  What 
he  does  seems  easy,  and  they  wish  to  emulate  it. 
It  is  useless  for  a  dull  and  devitalized  teacher  to 
exhort  her  pupils  to  wake  up  and  take  an  interest. 
She  must  first  take  one  herself;  then  her  example 
is  effective  as  no  exhortation  can  possibly  be. 

Every  school  has  its  tone,  moral  and  intellect- 
ual. And  this  tone  is  a  mere  tradition  kept  up  by 
imitation,  due  in  the  first  instance  to  the  example 
set  by  teachers  and  by  previous  pupils  of  an  ag- 
gressive and  dominating  type,  copied  by  the 
others,  and  passed  on  from  year  to  year,  so  that 
the  new  pupils  take  the  cue  almost  immediately. 
Such  a  tone  changes  very  slowly,  if  at  all;  and 
then  always  under  the  modifying  influence  of  new 
personalities  aggressive  enough  in  character  to  set 
new  patterns  and  not  merely  to  copy  the  old. 
The  classic  example  of  this  sort  of  tone  is  the 
often  quoted  case  of  Rugby  under  Dr.  Arnold's 
administration.  He  impressed  his  own  character 
as  a  model  on  the  imagination  of  the  oldest  boys, 


EMULATION1  51 

who  in  turn  were  expected  and  required  to  im- 
press theirs  upon  the  younger  set.  The  conta- 
giousness of  Arnold's  genius  was  such  that  a 
Rugby  man  was  said  to  be  recognizable  all 
through  life  by  a  peculiar  turn  of  character  which 
he  acquired  at  school.  It  is  obvious  that  psychol- 
ogy as  such  can  give  in  this  field  no  precepts  of 
detail.  As  in  so  many  other  fields  of  teaching, 
success  depends  mainly  on  the  native  genius  of 
the  teacher,  the  sympathy,  tact,  and  perception 
which  enable  him  to  seize  the  right  moment  and 
to  set  the  right  example. 

Among  the  recent  modern  reforms  of  teaching 
methods,  a  certain  disparagement  of  emulation,  as 
a  laudable  spring  of  action  in  the  schoolroom,  has 
often  made  itself  heard.  More  than  a  century 
ago,  Rousseau,  in  his  '  Emile,'  branded  rivalry  be- 
tween one  pupil  and  another  as  too  base  a  pas- 
sion to  play  a  part  in  an  ideal  education.  "  Let 
Emile,"  he  said,  "  never  be  led  to  compare  himself 
to  other  children.  No  rivalries,  not  even  in  run- 
ning, as  soon  as  he  begins  to  have  the  power  of 
reason.  It  were  a  hundred  times  better  that  he 
should  not  learn  at  all  what  he  could  only  learn 
through  jealousy  or  vanity.  But  I  would  mark 
out  every  year  the  progress  he  may  have  made, 


52  TALKS   TO   TEACHEKS 

and  I  would  compare  it  with  the  progress  of  the 
following  years.  I  would  say  to  him :  '  You  are 
now  grown  so  many  inches  taller;  there  is  the 
ditch  which  you  jumped  over,  there  is  the  burden 
which  you  raised.  There  is  the  distance  to  which 
you  could  throw  a  pebble,  there  the  distance  you 
could  run  over  without  losing  breath.  See  how 
much  more  you  can  do  now ! '  Thus  I  should  ex- 
cite him  without  making  him  jealous  of  any  one. 
He  would  wish  to  surpass  himself.  I  can  see  no 
inconvenience  in  this  emulation  with  his  former 
self." 

Unquestionably,  emulation  with  one's  former 
self  is  a  noble  form  of  the  passion  of  rivalry,  and 
has  a  wide  scope  in  the  training  of  the  young. 
But  to  veto  and  taboo  all  possible  rivalry  of  one 
youth  with  another,  because  such  rivalry  may 
degenerate  into  greedy  and  selfish  excess,  does 
seem  to  savor  somewhat  of  sentimentality,  or  even 
of  fanaticism.  The  feeling  of  rivalry  lies  at  the 
very  basis  of  our  being,  all  social  improvement 
being  largely  due  to  it.  There  is  a  noble  and 
generous  kind  of  rivalry,  as  well  as  a  spiteful  and 
greedy  kind ;  and  the  noble  and  generous  form  is 
particularly  common  in  childhood.  All  games  owe 
the  zest  which  they  bring  with  them  to  the  fact 


ITS   USEFULNESS   IN   THE   SCHOOLROOM       53 

that  they  are  rooted  in  the  emulous  passion,  yet 
they  are  the  chief  means  of  training  in  fairness  and 
magnanimity.  Can  the  teacher  afford  to  throw 
such  an  ally  away  ?  Ought  we  seriously  to  hope 
that  marks,  distinctions,  prizes,  and  other  goals  of 
effort,  based  on  the  pursuit  of  recognized  superior- 
ity, should  be  forever  banished  from  our  schools  ? 
As  a  psychologist,  obliged  to  notice  the  deep  and 
pervasive  character  of  the  emulous  passion,  I  must 
confess  my  doubts. 

The  wise  teacher  will  use  this  instinct  as  he 
uses  others,  reaping  its  advantages,  and  appealing 
to  it  in  such  a  way  as  to  reap  a  maximum  of 
benefit  with  a  minimum  of  harm;  for,  after  all,  we 
must  confess,  with  a  French  critic  of  Rousseau's 
doctrine,  that  the  deepest  spring  of  action  in  us  is 
the  sight  of  action  in  another.  The  spectacle  of 
effort  is  what  awakens  and  sustains  our  own  ef- 
fort. No  runner  running  all  alone  on  a  race-track 
will  find  in  his  own  will  the  power  of  stimulation 
which  his  rivalry  with  other  runners  incites,  when 
he  feels  them  at  his  heels,  about  to  pass.  When  a 
trotting  horse  is  '  speeded,'  a  running  horse  must 
go  beside  him  to  keep  him  to  the  pace. 


54  TALKS   TO  TEACHERS 

As  imitation  slides  into  emulation,  so  emulation 
slides  into  Ambition  ;  and  ambition  connects  itself 
closely  with  Pugnacity  and  Pride.  Consequently, 
these  five  instinctive  tendencies  form  an  inter- 
connected group  of  factors,  hard  to  separate  in  the 
determination  of  a  great  deal  of  our  conduct. 
The  Ambitious  Impulses  would  perhaps  be  the 
best  name  for  the  whole  group. 

Pride  and  pugnacity  have  often  been  considered 
unworthy  passions  to  appeal  to  in  the  young. 
But  in  their  more  refined  and  noble  forms  they 
play  a  great  part  in  the  schoolroom  and  in  educa- 
tion generally,  being  in  some  characters  most  po- 
tent spurs  to  effort.  Pugnacity  need  not  be 
thought  of  merely  in  the  form  of  physical  com- 
bativeness.  It  can  be  taken  in  the  sense  of  a  gen- 
eral unwillingness  to  be  beaten  by  any  kind  of 
difficulty.  It  is  what  makes  us  feel  'stumped' 
and  challenged  by  arduous  achievements,  and  is 
essential  to  a  spirited  and  enterprising  character. 
We  have  of  late  been  hearing  much  of  the 
philosophy  of  tenderness  in  education  ;  '  interest ' 
must  be  assiduously  awakened  in  everything,  diffi- 
culties must  be  smoothed  away.  Soft  pedagogics 
have  taken  the  place  of  the  old  steep  and  rocky 
path  to  learning.  But  from  this  lukewarm  air  the 


OWNERSHIP  55 

bracing  oxygen  of  effort  is  left  out.  It  is  nonsense 
to  suppose  that  every  step  in  education  can  be  in- 
teresting. The  fighting  impulse  must  often  be  ap- 
pealed to.  Make  the  pupil  feel  ashamed  of  being 
scared  at  fractions,  of  being  *  downed '  by  the  law 
of  falling  bodies ;  rouse  his  pugnacity  and  pride, 
and  he  will  rush  at  the  "difficult  places  with  a  sort 
of  inner  wrath  at  himself  that  is  one  of  his  best 
moral  faculties.  A  victory  scored  under  such  con- 
ditions becomes  a  turning-point  and  crisis  of  his 
character.  It  represents  the  high-water  mark  of 
his  powers,  and  serves  thereafter  as  an  ideal  pat- 
tern for  his  self-imitation.  The  teacher  who  never 
rouses  this  sort  of  pugnacious  excitement  in  his 
pupils  falls  short  of  one  of  his  best  forms  of  use- 
fulness. 

The  next  instinct  which  I  shall  mention  is  that 
of  Ownership,  also  one  of  the  radical  endowments 
of  the  race.  It  often  is  the  antagonist  of  imita- 
tion. Whether  social  progress  is  due  more  to 
the  passion  for  keeping  old  things  and  habits  or  to 
the  passion  of  imitating  and  acquiring  new  ones 
may  in  some  cases  be  a  difficult  thing  to  decide. 
The  sense  of  ownership  begins  in  the  second  year 
of  life.  Among  the  first  words  which  an  infant 


56  TALKS   TO   TEACHEES 

learns  to  utter  are  the  words  'my'  and  'mine,' 
and  woe  to  the  parents  of  twins  who  fail  to  pro- 
vide their  gifts  in  duplicate.  The  depth  and 
primitiveness  of  this  instinct  would  seem  to  cast 
a  sort  of  psychological  discredit  in  advance  upon 
all  radical  forms  of  communistic  Utopia.  Private 
proprietorship  cannot  be  practically  abolished  un- 
til human  nature  is  changed.  It  seems  essential 
to  mental  health  that  the  individual  should  have 
something  beyond  the  bare  clothes  on  his  back  to 
which  he  can  assert  exclusive  possession,  and 
which  he  may  defend  adversely  against  the  world. 
Even  those  religious  orders  who  make  the  most 
stringent  vows  of  poverty  have  found  it  necessary 
to  relax  the  rule  a  little  in  favor  of  the  human 
heart  made  unhappy  by  reduction  to  too  disinter- 
ested terms.  The  monk  must  have  his  books: 
the  nun  must  have  her  little  garden,  and  the 
images  and  pictures  in  her  room. 

In  education,  the  instinct  of  ownership  is  fun- 
damental, and  can  be  appealed  to  in  many  ways. 
In  the  house,  training  in  order  and  neatness  be- 
gins with  the  arrangement  of  the  child's  own 
personal  possessions.  In  the  school,  ownership 
is  particularly  important  in  connection  with  one 
of  its  special  forms  of  activity,  the  collecting  im- 


UTILITY   OF   THE   COLLECTING  IMPULSE       57 

pulse.  An  object  possibly  not  very  interesting 
in  itself,  like  a  shell,  a  postage  stamp,  or  a  single 
map  or  drawing,  will  acquire  an  interest  if  it  fills 
a  gap  in  a  collection  or  helps  to  complete  a  series. 
Much  of  the  scholarly  work  of  the  world,  so  far 
as  it  is  mere  bibliography,  memory,  and  erudition 
(and  this  lies  at  the  basis  of  all  our  human  scholar- 
ship), would  seem  to  owe  its  interest  rather  to  the 
way  in  which  it  gratifies  the  accumulating  and  col- 
lecting instinct  than  to  any  special  appeal  which 
it  makes  to  our  cravings  after  rationality.  A 
man  wishes  a  complete  collection  of  information, 
wishes  to  know  more  about  a  subject  than  any- 
body else,  much  as  another  may  wish  to  own 
more  dollars  or  more  early  editions  or  more  en- 
gravings before  the  letter  than  anybody  else. 

The  teacher  who  can  work  this  impulse  into 
the  school  tasks  is  fortunate.  Almost  all  children 
collect  something.  A  tactful  teacher  may  get 
them  to  take  pleasure  in  collecting  books;  in 
keeping  a  neat  and  orderly  collection  of  notes ;  in 
starting,  when  they  are  mature  enough,  a  card 
catalogue;  in  preserving  every  drawing  or  map 
which  they  may  make.  Neatness,  order,  and 
method  are  thus  instinctively  gained,  along  with 
the  other  benefits  which  the  possession  of  the 


58  TALKS  TO  TEACHERS 

collection  entails.  Even  such  a  noisome  thing  as 
a  collection  of  postage  stamps  may  be  used  by  the 
teacher  as  an  inciter  of  interest  in  the  geographi- 
cal and  historical  information  which  she  desires  to 
impart.  Sloyd  successfully  avails  itself  of  this 
instinct  in  causing  the  pupil  to  make  a  collection 
of  wooden  implements  fit  for  his  own  private  use 
at  home.  Collecting  is,  of  course,  the  basis  of  all 
natural  history  study;  and  probably  nobody  ever 
became  a  good  naturalist  who  was  not  an  unusu- 
ally active  collector  when  a  boy. 

Constructiveness  is  another  great  instinctive  ten- 
dency with  which  the  schoolroom  has  to  contract 
an  alliance.  Up  to  the  eighth  or  ninth  year  of 
childhood  one  may  say  that  the  child  does  hardly 
anything  else  than  handle  objects,  explore  things 
with  his  hands,  doing  and  undoing,  setting  up 
and  knocking  down,  putting  together  and  pulling 
apart ;  for,  from  the  psychological  point  of  view, 
construction  and  destruction  are  two  names  for 
the  same  manual  activity.  Both  signify  the  pro- 
duction of  change,  and  the  working  of  effects,  in 
outward  things.  The  result  of  all  this  is  that  in- 
timate familiarity  with  the  physical  environment, 
that  acquaintance  with  the  properties  of  material 


CONSTEUCTIVENESS  59 

things,  which  is  really  the  foundation  of  human, 
consciousness.  To  the  very  last,  in  most  of  us, 
the  conceptions  of  objects  and  their  properties 
are  limited  to  the  notion  of  what  we  can  do  with 
them.  A  '  stick '  means  something  we  can  lean 
upon  or  strike  with ;  '  fire,'  something  to  cook, 
or  warm  ourselves,  or  burn  things  up  withal; 
'string,'  something  with  which  to  tie  things  to- 
gether. For  most  people  these  objects  have  no 
other  meaning.  In  geometry,  the  cylinder,  circle, 
sphere,  are  defined  as  what  you  get  by  going 
through  certain  processes  of  construction,  revolv- 
ing a  parallelogram  upon  one  of  its  sides,  etc. 
The  more  different  kinds  of  things  a  child  thus 
gets  to  know  by  treating  and  handling  them,  the 
more  confident  grows  his  sense  of  kinship  with 
the  world  in  which  he  lives.  An  unsympathetic 
adult  will  wonder  at  the  fascinated  hours  which 
a  child  will  spend  in  putting  his  blocks  together 
and  rearranging  them.  But  the  wise  education 
takes  the  tide  at  the  flood,  and  from  the  kinder- 
garten upward  devotes  the  first  years  of  educa- 
tion to  training  in  construction  and  to  object- 
teaching.  I  need  not  recapitulate  here  what  I 
said  awhile  back  about  the  superiority  of  the 
objective  and  experimental  methods.  They  oc- 


60  TALKS   TO   TEACHERS 

cupy  the  pupil  in  a  way  most  congruous  with  the 
spontaneous  interests  of  his  age.  They  absorb 
him,  and  leave  impressions  durable  and  profound. 
Compared  with  the  youth  taught  by  these  methods, 
one  brought  up  exclusively  by  books  carries 
through  life  a  certain  remoteness  from  reality: 
he  stands,  as  it  were,  out  of  the  pale,  and  feels 
that  he  stands  so ;  and  often  suffers  a  kind  of 
melancholy  from  which  he  might  have  been  res- 
cued by  a  more  real  education. 

There  are  other  impulses,  such  as  love  of  appro- 
bation or  vanity,  shyness  and  secretiveness,  of 
which  a  word  might  be  said;  but  they  are  too 
familiar  to  need  it.  You  can  easily  pursue  the 
subject  by  your  own  reflection.  There  is  one 
general  law,  however,  that  relates  to  many  of  our 
instinctive  tendencies,  and  that  has  no  little  impor- 
tance in  education ;  and  I  must  refer  to  it  briefly 
before  I  leave  the  subject.  It  has  been  called  the 
law  of  transitoriness  in  instincts.  Many  of  our 
impulsive  tendencies  ripen  at  a  certain  period; 
and,  if  the  appropriate  objects  be  then  and  there 
provided,  habits  of  conduct  toward  them  are  ac- 
quired which  last.  But,  if  the  objects  be  not  forth- 
coming then,  the  impulse  may  die  out  before  a 


THE   TEANSITORIKESS   OF   INSTINCTS  61 

habit  is  formed ;  and  later  it  may  be  hard  to  teach 
the  creature  to  react  appropriately  in  those  direc- 
tions. The  sucking  instincts  in  mammals,  the 
following  instinct  in  certain  birds  and  quadrupeds, 
are  examples  of  this :  they  fade  away  shortly  after 
birth. 

In  children  we  observe  a  ripening  of  impulses 
and  interests  in  a  certain  determinate  order. 
Creeping,  walking,  climbing,  imitating  vocal 
sounds,  constructing,  drawing,  calculating,  pos- 
sess the  child  in  succession;  and  in  some  chil- 
dren the  possession,  while  it  lasts,  may  be  of  a 
semi-frantic  and  exclusive  sort.  Later,  the  inter- 
est in  any  one  of  these  things  may  wholly  fade 
away.  Of  course,  the  proper  pedagogic  moment 
to  work  skill  in,  and  to  clench  the  useful  habit,  is 
when  the  native  impulse  is  most  acutely  present. 
Crowd  on  the  athletic  opportunities,  the  mental 
arithmetic,  the  verse-learning,  the  drawing,  the 
botany,  or  what  not,  the  moment  you  have  reason 
to  think  the  hour  is  ripe.  The  hour  may  not  last 
long,  and  while  it  continues  you  may  safely  let 
all  the  child's  other  occupations  take  a  second 
place.  In  this  way  you  economize  time  and 
deepen  skill;  for  many  an  infant  prodigy,  artis- 
tic or  mathematical,  has  a  flowering  epoch  of  but 
a  few  months. 


62  TALKS   TO   TEACHERS 

One  can  draw  no  specific  rules  for  all  this.  It 
depends  on  close  observation  in  the  particular 
case,  and  parents  here  have  a  great  advantage 
over  teachers.  In  fact,  the  law  of  transitoriness 
has  little  chance  of  individualized  application  in 
the  schools. 

Such  is  the  little  interested  and  impulsive  psy- 
chophysical  organism  whose  springs  of  action  the 
teacher  must  divine,  and  to  whose  ways  he  must 
become  accustomed.  He  must  start  with  the  na- 
tive tendencies,  and  enlarge  the  pupil's  entire  pas- 
sive and  active  experience.  He  must  ply  him 
with  new  objects  and  stimuli,  and  make  him  taste 
the  fruits  of  his  behavior,  so  that  now  that  whole 
context  of  remembered  experience  is  what  shall 
determine  his  conduct  when  he  gets  the  stimulus, 
and  not  the  bare  immediate  impression.  As  the 
pupil's  life  thus,  enlarges,  it  gets  fuller  and  fuller 
of  all  sorts  of  memories  and  associations  and  sub- 
stitutions ;  but  the  eye  accustomed  to  psychologi- 
cal analysis  will  discern,  underneath  it  all,  the 
outlines  of  our  simple  psychophysical  scheme. 

Respect  then,  I  beg  y6u,  always  the  original 
reactions,  even  when  you  are  seeking  to  overcome 
their  connection  with  certain  objects,  and  to  sup- 


BAD   AND   GOOD   BEHAVIOR  63 

plant  them  with  others  that  you  wish  to  make  the 
rule.  Bad  behavior,  from  the  point  of  view  of 
the  teacher's  art,  is  as  good  a  starting-point  as 
good  behavior.  In  fact,  paradoxical  as  it  may 
sound  to  say  so,  it  is  often  a.  better  starting-point 
than  good  behavior  would  be. 

The  acquired  reactions  must  be  made  habitual 
whenever  they  are  appropriate.  Therefore  Habit 
is  the  next  subject  to  which  your  attention  is 
invited. 


VIII. 

THE  LAWS  OF  HABIT 

IT  is  very  important  that  teachers  should  realize 
the  importance  of  habit,  and  psychology  helps 
us  greatly  at  this  point.  We  speak,  it  is  true,  of 
good  habits  and  of  bad  habits ;  but,  when  people 
use  the  word  '  habit,'  in  the  majority  of  instances  it 
is  a  bad  habit  which  they  have  in  mind.  They 
talk  of  the  smoking-habit  and  the  swearing-habit 
and  the  drinking-habit,  but  not  of  the  abstention- 
habit  or  the  moderation-habit  or  the  courage- 
habit.  But  the  fact  is  that  our  virtues  are  habits 
as  much  as  our  vices.  All  our  life,  so  far  as  it 
has  definite  form,  is  but  a  mass  of  habits, —  prac- 
tical, emotional,  and  intellectual, —  systematically 
organized  for  our  weal  or  woe,  and  bearing  us 
irresistibly  toward  our  destiny,  whatever  the  lat- 
ter may  be. 

Since  pupils  can  understand  this  at  a  compara- 
tively early  age,  and  since  to  understand  it  con- 
tributes in  no  small  measure  to  their  feeling  of 
responsibility,  it  would  be  well  if  the  teacher  were 


HABIT   A   SECOND   NATURE  65 

able  himself  to  talk  to  them  of  the  philosophy  of 
habit  in  some  such  abstract  terms  as  I  am  now 
about  to  talk  of  it  to  you. 

I  believe  that  we  are  subject  to  the  law  of  habit 
in  consequence  of  the  fact  that  we  have  bodies. 
The  plasticity  of  the  living  matter  of  our  nervous 
system,  in  short,  is  the  reason  why  we  do  a  thing 
with  difficulty  the  first  time,  but  soon  do  it  more 
and  more  easily,  and  finally,  with  sufficient  prac- 
tice, do  it  semi-mechanically,  or  with  hardly  any 
consciousness  at  all.  Our  nervous  systems  have 
(in  Dr.  Carpenter's  words)  grown  to  the  way  in 
which  they  have  been  exercised,  just  as  a  sheet  of 
paper  or  a  coat,  once  creased  or  folded,  tends  to 
fall  forever  afterward  into  the  same  identical 
folds. 

Habit  is  thus  a  second  nature,  or  rather,  as  the 
Duke  of  Wellington  said,  it  is  '  ten  times  nature,' 
—  at  any  rate  as  regards  its  importance  in  adult 
life ;  for  the  acquired  habits  of  our  training  have 
by  that  time  inhibited  or  strangled  most  of  the 
natural  impulsive  tendencies  which  were  origi- 
nally there.  Ninety-nine  hundredths  or,  possibly, 
nine  hundred  and  ninety-nine  thousandths  of  our 
activity  is  purely  automatic  and  habitual,  from  our 
rising  in  the  morning  to  our  lying  down  each 


66  TALKS   TO   TEACHEES 

night.  Our  dressing  and  undressing,  our  eating 
and  drinking,  our  greetings  and  partings,  our  hat- 
raisings  and  giving  way  for  ladies  to  precede,  nay, 
even  most  of  the  forms  of  our  common  speech,  are 
things  of  a  type  so  fixed  by  repetition  as  almost  to 
be  classed  as  reflex  actions.  To  each  sort  of  im- 
pression we  have  an  automatic,  ready-made  re- 
sponse. My  very  words  to  you  now  are  an  exam- 
ple of  what  I  mean ;  for  having  already  lectured 
upon  habit  and  printed  a  chapter  about  it  in  a 
book,  and  read  the  latter  when  in  print,  I  find  my 
tongue  inevitably  falling  into  its  old  phrases  and 
repeating  almost  literally  what  I  said  before. 

So  far  as  we  are  thus  mere  bundles  of  habit,  we 
are  stereotyped  creatures,  imitators  and  copiers  of 
our  past  selves.  And  since  this,  under  any  cir- 
cumstances, is  what  we  always  tend  to  become, 
it  follows  first  of  all  that  the  teacher's  prime  con- 
cern should  be  to  ingrain  into  the  pupil  that  as- 
sortment of  habits  that  shall  be  most  useful  to 
him  throughout  life.  Education  is  for  behavior, 
and  habits  are  the  stuff  of  which  behavior  consists. 

To  quote  my  earlier  book  directly,  the  great 
thing  in  all  education  is  to  make  our  nervous  sys- 
tem our  ally  instead  of  our  enemy.  It  is  to  fund 
and  capitalize  our  acquisitions,  and  live  at  ease 


VALUE   OF   GOOD   HABITS  57 

upon  the  interest  of  the  fund.  'For  this  we  must 
make  automatic  and  habitual,  as  early  as  possible, 
as  many  useful  actions  as  we  can,  and  as  carefully 
guard  against  the  growing  into  ways  that  are 
likely  to  be  disadvantageous.  The  more  of  the 
details  of  our  daily  life  we  can  hand  over  to  the 
effortless  custody  of  automatism,  the  more  our 
higher  powers  of  mind  will  be  set  free  for  their 
own  proper  work.  There  is  no  more  miserable 
human  being  than  one  in  whom  nothing  is  habit- 
ual but  indecision,  and  for  whom  the  lighting  of 
every  cigar,  the  drinking  of  every  cap,  the  time 
of  rising  and  going  to  bed  every  day,  and  the 
beginning  of  every  bit  of  work  are  subjects  of 
express  volitional  deliberation.  Full  half  the  time 
of  such  a  man  goes  to  the  deciding  or  regretting 
of  matters  which  ought  to  be  so  ingrained  in  him 
as  practically  not  to  exist  for  his  consciousness  at 
all.  If  there  be  such  daily  duties  not  yet  in- 
grained in  any  one  of  my  hearers,  let  him  begin 
this  very  hour  to  set  the  matter  right. 

In  Professor  Bain's  chapter  on  'The  Moral 
Habits '  there  are  some  admirable  practical  re- 
marks laid  down.  Two  great  maxims  emerge 
from  the  treatment.  The  first  is  that  in  the  ac- 
quisition of  a  new  habit,  or  the  leaving  off  of  an 


68  TALKS   TO  TEACHERS 

old  one,  we  must  take  care  to  launch  ourselves 
with  as  strong  and  decided  an  initiative  as  possible. 
Accumulate  all  the  possible  circumstances  which 
shall  reinforce  the  right  motives;  put  yourself 
assiduously  in  conditions  that  encourage  the  new 
way;  make  engagements  incompatible  with  the 
old;  take  a  public  pledge,  if  the  case  allows;  in 
short,  envelope  your  resolution  with  every  aid 
you  know.  This  will  give  your  new  beginning 
such  a  momentum  that  the  temptation  to  break 
down  will  not  occur  as  soon  as  it  otherwise  might ; 
and  every  day  during  which  a  breakdown  is  post- 
poned adds  to  the  chances  of  its  not  occurring 
at  all. 

I  remember  long  ago  reading  in  an  Austrian 
paper  the  advertisement  of  a  certain  Rudolph 
Somebody,  who  promised  fifty  gulden  reward  to 
any  one  who  after  that  date  should  find  him  at 
the  wine-shop  of  Ambrosius  So-and-so.  '  This  I 
do,'  the  advertisement  continued,  '  in  consequence 
of  a  promise  which  I  have  made  my  wife.'  With 
such  a  wife,  and  such  an  understanding  of  the 
way  in  which  to  start  new  habits,  it  would  be 
safe  to  stake  one's  money  on  Rudolph's  ultimate 
success. 

The  second  maxim  is,  Never  suffer  an  exception 


MAXIMS   FOR   HABIT-FORMING  69 

to  occur  till  the  new  habit  is  securely  rooted  in  your 
life.  Each  lapse  is  like  the  letting  fall  of  a  ball  of 
string  which  one  is  carefully  winding  up :  a  single 
slip  undoes  more  than  a  great  many  turns  will 
wind  again.  Continuity  of  training  is  the  great 
means  of  making  the  nervous  system  act  infallibly 
right.  As  Professor  Bain  says :  — 

"  The  peculiarity  of  the  moral  habits,  contradis- 
tinguishing  them  from  the  intellectual  acquisi- 
tions, is  the  presence  of  two  hostile  powers,  one 
to  be  gradually  raised  into  the  ascendant  over  the 
other.  It  is  necessary  above  all  things,  in  such  a 
situation,  never  to  lose  a  battle.  Every  gain  on 
the  wrong  side  undoes  the  effect  of  many  con- 
quests on  the  right.  The  essential  precaution, 
therefore,  is  so  to  regulate  the  two  opposing 
powers  that  the  one  may  have  a  series  of  unin- 
terrupted successes,  until  repetition  has  fortified  it 
to  such  a  degree  as  to  enable  it  to  cope  with  the 
opposition,  under  any  circumstances.  This  is  the 
theoretically  best  career  of  mental  progress." 

A  third  maxim  may  be  added  to  the  preceding 
pair :  Seize  the  very  first  possible  opportunity  to  act 
on  every  resolution  you  make,  and  on  every  emo- 
tional prompting  you  may  experience  in  the  direc* 
tion  of  the  habits  you  aspire  to  gain.  It  is  not  in 


70  TALKS  TO   TEACHEBS 

the  moment  of  their  forming,  but  in  the  moment 
of  their  producing  motor  effects,  that  resolves  and 
aspirations  communicate  the  new  'set'  to  the 
brain. 

No  matter  how  full  a  reservoir  of  maxims  one 
may  possess,  and  no  matter  how  good  one's  senti- 
ments may  be,  if  one  have  not  taken  advantage  of 
every  concrete  opportunity  to  act,  one's  character 
may  remain  entirely  unaffected  for  the  better. 
With  good  intentions,  hell  proverbially  is  paved. 
This  is  an  obvious  consequence  of  the  principles 
I  have  laid  down.  A  '  character,'  as  J.  S.  Mill  says, 
*  is  a  completely  fashioned  will ' ;  and  a  will,  in  the 
sense  in  which  he  means  it,  is  an  aggregate  of 
tendencies  to  act  in  a  firm  and  prompt  and  defi- 
nite way  upon  all  the  principal  emergencies  of 
life.  A  tendency  to  act  only  becomes  effectively 
ingrained  in  us  in  proportion  to  the  uninterrupted 
frequency  with  which  the  actions  actually  occur, 
and  the  brain  '  grows '  to  their  use.  When  a  re- 
solve or  a  fine  glow  of  feeling  is  allowed  to  evap- 
orate without  bearing  practical  fruit,  it  is  worse 
than  a  chance  lost:  it  works  so  as  positively  to 
hinder  future  resolutions  and  emotions  from  tak- 
ing the  normal  path  of  discharge.  There  is  no 
more  contemptible  type  of  human  character  than 


MAXTMR  FOB   HABIT-FOBMING  71 

that  of  the  nerveless  sentimentalist  and  dreamer, 
who  spends  his  life  in  a  weltering  sea  of  sensibil- 
ity, but  never  does  a  concrete  manly  deed. 

This  leads  to  a  fourth  maxim.  Don't  preach 
too  much  to  your  pupils  or  abound  in  good  talk  in 
the  abstract.  Lie  in  wait  rather  for  the  practical 
opportunities,  be  prompt  to  seize  those  as  they 
pass,  and  thus  at  one  operation  get  your  pupils 
both  to  think,  to  feel,  and  to  do.  The  strokes  of 
behavior  are  what  give  the  new  set  to  the  charac- 
ter, and  work  the  good  habits  into  its  organic 
tissue.  Preaching  and  talking  too  soon  become 
an  ineffectual  bore. 

There  is  a  passage  in  Darwin's  short  auto- 
biography which  has  been  often  quoted,  and 
which,  for  the  sake  of  its  bearing  on  our  subject 
of  habit,  I  must  now  quote  again.  Darwin  says : 
"  Up  to  the  age  of  thirty  or  beyond  it,  poetry  of 
many  kinds  gave  me  great  pleasure ;  and  even  as 
a  schoolboy  I  took  intense  delight  in  Shakespeare, 
especially  in  the  historical  plays.  I  have  also  said 
that  pictures  formerly  gave  me  considerable,  and 
music  very  great  delight.  But  now  for  many  years 
I  cannot  endure  to  read  a  line  of  poetry.  I  have 
tried  lately  to  read  Shakespeare,  and  found  it  so 


72  TALKS   TO   TEACHEKS 

intolerably  dull  that  it  nauseated  me.  I  have  also 
almost  lost  my  taste  for  pictures  or  music.  .  .  .  My 
mind  seems  to  have  become  a  kind  of  machine  for 
grinding  general  laws  out  of  large  collections  of 
facts ;  but  why  this  should  have  caused  the  atrophy 
of  that  part  of  the  brain  alone,  on  which  the  higher 
tastes  depend,  I  cannot  conceive.  ...  If  I  had  to 
live  my  life  again,  I  would  have  made  a  rule  to 
read  some  poetry  and  listen  to  some  music  at 
least  once  every  week;  for  perhaps  the  parts  of 
my  brain  now  atrophied  would  thus  have  been 
kept  alive  through  use.  The  loss  of  these  tastes  is 
a  loss  of  happiness,  and  may  possibly  be  injurious 
to  the  intellect,  and  more  probably  to  the  moral 
character,  by  enfeebling  the  emotional  part  of  our 
nature." 

We  all  intend  when  young  to  be  all  that  may 
become  a  man,  before  the  destroyer  cuts  us  down. 
We  wish  and  expect  to  enjoy  poetry  always,  to 
grow  more  and  more  intelligent  about  pictures 
and  music,  to  keep  in  touch  with  spiritual  and 
religious  ideas,  and  even  not  to  let  the  greater 
philosophic  thoughts  of  our  time  develop  quite 
beyond  our  view.  We  mean  all  this  in  youth,  I 
say ;  and  yet  in  how  many  middle-aged  men  and 
women  is  such  an  honest  and  sanguine  expectation 


DABWIN'S  CASE  AS  A  WARNING          73 

fulfilled  ?  Surely,  in  comparatively  few ;  and  the 
laws  of  habit  show  us  why.  Some  interest  in  each 
of  these  things  arises  in  everybody  at  the  proper 
age ;  but,  if  not  persistently  fed  with  the  appropri- 
ate matter,  instead  of  growing  into  a  powerful  and 
necessary  habit,  it  atrophies  and  dies,  choked  by 
the  rival  interests  to  which  the  daily  food  is 
given.  "We  make  ourselves  into  Darwins  in  this 
negative  respect  by  persistently  ignoring  the  es- 
sential practical  conditions  of  our  case.  We  say 
abstractly :  "  I  mean  to  enjoy  poetry,  and  to  ab- 
sorb a  lot  of  it,  of  course.  I  fully  intend  to  keep 
up  my  love  of  music,  to  read  the  books  that  shall 
give  new  turns  to  the  thought  of  my  time,  to  keep 
my  higher  spiritual  side  alive,  etc."  But  we  do 
not  attack  these  things  concretely,  and  we  do  not 
begin  to-day.  We  forget  that  every  good  that  is 
worth  possessing  must  be  paid  for  in  strokes  of 
daily  effort.  We  postpone  and  postpone,  until 
those  smiling  possibilities  are  dead.  Whereas  ten 
minutes  a  day  of  poetry,  of  spiritual  reading  or 
meditation,  and  an  hour  or  two  a  week  at  music, 
pictures,  or  philosophy,  provided  we  began  now 
and  suffered  no  remission,  would  infallibly  give 
us  in  due  time  the  fulness  of  all  we  desire.  By 
neglecting  the  necessary  concrete  labor,  by  sparing 


74  TALKS   TO   TEACHEES 

ourselves  the  little  daily  tax,  we  are  positively 
digging  the  graves  of  our  higher  possibilities. 
This  is  a  point  concerning  which  you  teachers 
might  well  give  a  little  timely  information  to  your 
older  and  more  aspiring  pupils. 

According  as  a  function  receives  daily  exercise 
or  not,  the  man  becomes  a  different  kind  of  being 
in  later  life.  We  have  lately  had  a  number  of 
accomplished  Hindoo  visitors  at  Cambridge,  who 
talked  freely  of  life  and  philosophy.  More  than 
one  of  them  has  confided  to  me  that  the  sight  of 
our  faces,  all  contracted  as  they  are  with  the  habit- 
ual American  over-intensity  and  anxiety  of  expres- 
sion, and  our  ungraceful  and  distorted  attitudes 
when  sitting,  made  on  him  a  very  painful  impres- 
sion. "  I  do  not  see,"  said  one,  "  how  it  is  possible 
for  you  to  live  as  you  do,  without  a  single  minute 
in  your  day  deliberately  given  to  tranquillity  and 
meditation.  It  is  an  invariable  part  of  our  Hindoo 
life  to  retire  for  at  least  half  an  hour  daily  into 
silence,  to  relax  our  muscles,  govern  our  breathing, 
and  meditate  on  eternal  things.  Every  Hindoo 
child  is  trained  to  this  from  a  very  early  age." 
The  good  fruits  of  such  a  discipline  were  obvious 
in  the  physical  repose  and  lack  of  tension,  and 
the  wonderful  smoothness  and  calmness  of  facial 


THE  HABIT   OF   EELAXATION  75 

expression,  and  imperturbability  of  manner  of 
these  Orientals.  I  felt  that  my  countrymen  were 
depriving  themselves  of  an  essential  grace  of  char- 
acter. How  many  American  children  ever  hear  it 
said,  by  parent  or  teacher,  that  they  should  moder- 
ate their  piercing  voices,  that  they  should  relax 
their  unused  muscles,  and  as  far  as  possible,  when 
sitting,  sit  quite  still?  Not  one  in  a  thousand, 
not  one  in  five  thousand !  Yet,  from  its  reflex 
influence  on  the  inner  mental  states,  this  ceaseless 
over-tension,  over-motion,  and  over-expression  are 
working  on  us  grievous  national  harm. 

I  beg  you  teachers  to  think  a  little  seriously  of 
this  matter.  Perhaps  you  can  help  our  rising  gen- 
eration of  Americans  toward  the  beginning  of  a 
better  set  of  personal  ideals.* 

To  go  back  now  to  our  general  maxims,  I  may 
at  last,  as  a  fifth  and  final  practical  maxim  about 
habits,  offer  something  like  this :  Keep  the  faculty 
of  effort  alive  in  you  by  a  little  gratuitous  exercise 
every  day.  That  is,  be  systematically  heroic  in 
little  unnecessary  points,  do  every  day  or  two 
something  for  no  other  reason  than  its  difficulty, 
so  that,  when  the  hour  of  dire  need  draws  nigh,  it 

*  See  the  Address  on  the  Gospel  of  Relaxation,  later  in  this  volume. 


76  TALKS   TO   TEACHERS 

may  find  you  not  unnerved  and  untrained  to  stand 
the  test.  Asceticism  of  this  sort  is  like  the  insur- 
ance which  a  man  pays  on  his  house  and  goods. 
The  tax  does  him  no  good  at  the  time,  and  possi- 
bly may  never  bring  him  a  return.  But,  if  the  fire 
does  come,  his  having  paid  it  will  be  his  salvation 
from  ruin.  So  with  the  man  who  has  daily  inured 
himself  to  habits  of  concentrated  attention,  ener- 
getic volition,  and  self-denial  in  unnecessary  things. 
He  will  stand  like  a  tower  when  everything  rocks 
around  him,  and  his  softer  fellow-mortals  are  win- 
nowed like  chaff  in  the  blast. 

I  have  been  accused,  when  talking  of  the  sub- 
ject of  habit,  of  making  old  habits  appear  so 
strong  that  the  acquiring  of  new  ones,  and  partic- 
ularly anything  like  a  sudden  reform  or  conver- 
sion, would  be  made  impossible  by  my  doctrine. 
Of  course,  this  would  sufiice  to  condemn  the  lat- 
ter; for  sudden  conversions,  however  infrequent 
they  may  be,  unquestionably  do  occur.  But  there 
is  no  incompatibility  between  the  general  laws  I 
have  laid  down  and  the  most  startling  sudden 
alterations  in  the  way  of  character.  New  habits 
can  be  launched,  I  have  expressly  said,  on  condi- 
tion of  there  being  new  stimuli  and  new  excite- 


THE   SCOPE   OF   HABIT'S  EFFECTS  77 

ments.  Now  life  abounds  in  these,  and  sometimes 
they  are  such  critical  and  revolutionary  experi- 
ences that  they  change  a  man's  whole  scale  of 
values  and  system  of  ideas.  In  such  cases,  the 
old  order  of  his  habits  will  be  ruptured ;  and,  if 
the  new  motives  are  lasting,  new  habits  will  be 
formed,  and  build  up  in  him  a  new  or  regener- 
ate 'nature.' 

All  this  kind  of  fact  I  fully  allow.  But  the 
general  laws  of  habit  are  no  wise  altered  thereby, 
and  the  physiological  study  of  mental  conditions 
still  remains  on  the  whole  the  most  powerful  ally 
of  hortatory  ethics.  The  hell  to  be  endured  here- 
after, of  which  theology  tells,  is  no  worse  than  the 
hell  we  make  for  ourselves  in  this  world  by  habit- 
ually fashioning  our  characters  in  the  wrong  way. 
Could  the  young  but  realize  how  soon  they  will 
become  mere  walking  bundles  of  habits,  they 
would  give  more  heed  to  their  conduct  while  in 
the  plastic  state.  We  are  spinning  our  own  fates, 
good  or  evil,  and  never  to  be  undone.  Every 
smallest  stroke  of  virtue  or  of  vice  leaves  its 
never-so-little  scar.  The  drunken  Rip  Van  Win- 
kle, in  Jefferson's  play,  excuses  himself  for  every 
fresh  dereliction  by  saying,  "I  won't  count  this 
time ! "  Well,  he  may  not  count  it,  and  a  kind 
Heaven  may  not  count  it ;  but  it  is  being  counted 


78  TALKS   TO   TEACHERS 

none  the  less.  Down  among  his  nerve-cells  and 
fibres  the  molecules  are  counting  it,  registering 
and  storing  it  up  to  be  used  against  him  when  the 
next  temptation  comes.  Nothing  we  ever  do  is, 
in  strict  scientific  literalness,  wiped  out. 

Of  course,  this  has  its  good  side  as  well  as  its 
bad  one.  As  we  become  permanent  drunkards  by 
so  many  separate  drinks,  so  we  become  saints  in 
the  moral,  and  authorities  and  experts  in  the 
practical  and  scientific  spheres,  by  so  many  sepa- 
rate acts  and  hours  of  work.  Let  no  youth  have 
any  anxiety  about  the  upshot  of  his  education, 
whatever  the  line  of  it  may  be.  If  he  keep  faith- 
fully busy  each  hour  of  the  working  day,  he  may 
safely  leave  the  final  result  to  itself.  He  can  with 
perfect  certainty  count  on  waking  up  some  fine 
morning  to  find  himself  one  of  the  competent 
ones  of  his  generation,  in  whatever  pursuit  he 
may  have  singled  out.  Silently,  between  all  the 
details  of  his  business,  the  power  of  judging  in 
all  that  class  of  matter  will  have  built  itself  up 
within  him  as  a  possession  that  will  never  pass 
away.  Young  people  should  know  this  truth  in 
advance.  The  ignorance  of  it  has  probably  en- 
gendered more  discouragement  and  faint-hearted- 
ness  in  youths  embarking  on  arduous  careers 
than  all  other  causes  put  together. 


IX. 

THE  ASSOCIATION  OF  IDEAS 

IN  my  last  talk,  in  treating  of  Habit,  I  chiefly 
had  in  mind  our  motor  habits, —  habits  of  external 
conduct.  But  our  thinking  and  feeling  processes 
are  also  largely  subject  to  the  law  of  habit,  and 
one  result  of  this  is  a  phenomenon  which  you  all 
know  under  the  name  of  '  the  association  of  ideas.' 
To  that  phenomenon  I  ask  you  now  to  turn. 

You  remember  that  consciousness  is  an  ever- 
flowing  stream  of  objects,  feelings,  and  impulsive 
tendencies.  We  saw  already  that  its  phases  or 
pulses  are  like  so  many  fields  or  waves,  each 
field  or  wave  having  usually  its  central  point  of 
liveliest  attention,  in  the  shape  of  the  most  promi- 
nent object  in  our  thought,  while  all  around  this 
lies  a  margin  of  other  objects  more  dimly  realized, 
together  with  the  margin  of  emotional  and 
active  tendencies  which  the  whole  entails.  De- 
scribing the  mind  thus  in  fluid  terms,  we  cling  as 
close  as  possible  to  nature.  At  first  sight,  it  might 
seem  as  if,  in  the  fluidity  of  these  successive  waves, 


80  TALKS   TO  TEACHERS 

everything  is  indeterminate.  But  inspection 
shows  that  each  wave  has  a  constitution  which 
can  be  to  some  degree  explained  by  the  constitu- 
tion of  the  waves  just  passed  away.  And  this 
relation  of  the  wave  to  its  predecessors  is  expressed 
by  the  two  fundamental  '  laws  of  association,'  so- 
called,  of  which  the  first  is  named  the  Law  of 
Contiguity,  the  second  that  of  Similarity. 

The  Law  of  Contiguity  tells  us  that  objects 
thought  of  in  the  coming  wave  are  such  as  in  some 
previous  experience  were  next  to  the  objects  repre- 
sented in  the  wave  that  is  passing  away.  The 
vanishing  objects  were  once  formerly  their  neigh- 
bors in  the  mind.  When  you  recite  the  alphabet 
or  your  prayers,  or  when  the  sight  of  an  object 
reminds  you  of  its  name,  or  the  name  reminds  you 
of  the  object,  it  is  through  the  law  of  contiguity 
that  the  terms  are  suggested  to  the  mind. 

The  Law  of  Similarity  says  that,  when  contigu- 
ity fails  to  describe  what  happens,  the  coming 
objects  will  prove  to  resemble  the  going  objects, 
even  though  the  two  were  never  experienced 
together  before.  In  our  '  flights  of  fancy,'  this  is 
frequently  the  case. 

If,  arresting  ourselves  in  the  flow  of  reverie, 
we  ask  the  question,  "  How  came  we  to  be  think- 


THE  TWO   LAWS   OF   ASSOCIATION  81 

ing  of  just  this  object  now  ? "  we  can  almost  al- 
ways trace  its  presence  to  some  previous  object 
which  has  introduced  it  to  the  mind,  according  to 
one  or  the  other  of  these  laws.  The  entire  rou- 
tine of  our  memorized  acquisitions,  for  example, 
is  a  consequence  of  nothing  but  the  Law  of  Con- 
tiguity. The  words  of  a  poem,  the  formulas  of 
trigonometry,  the  facts  of  history,  the  properties 
of  material  things,  are  all  known  to  us  as  definite 
systems  or  groups  of  objects  which  cohere  in  an 
order  fixed  by  innumerable  iterations,  and  of 
which  any  one  part  reminds  us  of  the  others.  In 
dry  and  prosaic  minds,  almost  all  the  mental  se- 
quences flow  along  these  lines  of  habitual  rou- 
tine repetition  and  suggestion. 

In  witty,  imaginative  minds,  on  the  other  hand, 
the  routine  is  broken  through  with  ease  at  any 
moment ;  and  one  field  of  mental  objects  will  sug- 
gest another  with  which  perhaps  in  the  whole  his- 
tory of  human  thinking  it  had  never  once  before 
been  coupled.  The  link  here  is  usually  some  anal- 
ogy between  the  objects  successively  thought  of, — 
an  analogy  often  so  subtle  that,  although  we  feel 
it,  we  can  with  difficulty  analyze  its  ground ;  as 
where,  for  example,  we  find  something  masculine 
in  the  color  red  and  something  feminine  in  the 


82  TALKS   TO   TEACHERS 

color  pale  blue,  or  where,  of  three  human  beings' 
characters,  one  will  remind  us  of  a  cat,  another 
of  a  dog,  the  third  perhaps  of  a  cow. 

Psychologists  have  of  course  gone  very  deeply 
into  the  question  of  what  the  causes  of  association 
may  be ;  and  some  of  them  have  tried  to  show  that 
contiguity  and  similarity  are  not  two  radically 
diverse  laws,  but  that  either  presupposes  the  pres- 
ence of  the  other.  I  myself  am  disposed  to  think 
that  the  phenomena  of  association  depend  on  our 
cerebral  constitution,  and  are  not  immediate  con- 
sequences of  our  being  rational  beings.  In  other 
words,  when  we  shall  have  become  disembodied 
spirits,  it  may  be  that  our  trains  of  consciousness 
will  follow  different  laws.  These  questions  are 
discussed  in  the  books  on  psychology,  and  I  hope 
that  some  of  you  will  be  interested  in  following 
them  there.  But  I  will,  on  the  present  occasion, 
ignore  them  entirely ;  for,  as  teachers,  it  is  the  fact 
of  association  that  practically  concerns  you,  let 
its  grounds  be  spiritual  or  cerebral  or  what  they 
may,  and  let  its  laws  be  reducible,  or  non-reduci- 
ble, to  one.  Your  pupils,  whatever  else  they  are, 
are  at  any  rate  little  pieces  of  associating  machin- 
ery. Their  education  consists  in  the  organizing 


THEIR   GREAT   SCOPE  83 

within  them  of  determinate  tendencies  to  associate 
one  thing  with  another, —  impressions  with  conse- 
quences, these  with  reactions,  those  with  results, 
and  so  on  indefinitely.  The  more  copious  the 
associative  systems,  the  completer  the  individual's 
adaptations  to  the  world. 

The  teacher  can  formulate  his  function  to  him- 
self therefore  in  terms  of  '  association '  as  well  as 
in  terms  of  *  native  and  acquired  reaction.'  It  is 
mainly  that  of  building  up  useful  systems  of  asso- 
ciation in  the  pupil's  mind.  This  description 
sounds  wider  than  the  one  I  began  by  giving. 
But,  when  one  thinks  that  our  trains  of  associa- 
tion, whatever  they  may  be,  normally  issue  in  ac- 
quired reactions  or  behavior,  one  sees  that  in  a 
general  way  the  same  mass  of  facts  is  covered  by 
both  formulas. 

It  is  astonishing  how  many  mental  operations 
we  can  explain  when  we  have  once  grasped  the 
principles  of  association.  The  great  problem  which 
association  undertakes  to  solve  is,  Why  does  just 
this  particular  field  of  consciousness,  constituted  in 
this  particular  way,  now  appear  before  my  mind? 
It  may  be  a  field  of  objects  imagined ;  it  may  be 
of  objects  remembered  or  of  objects  perceived ;  it 
may  include  an  action  resolved  on.  In  either  case, 


84  TALKS  TO  TEACHERS 

when  the  field  is  analyzed  into  its  parts,  those 
parts  can  be  shown  to  have  proceeded  from  parts 
of  fields  previously  before  consciousness,  in  con- 
sequence of  one  or  other  of  the  laws  of  association 
just  laid  down.  Those  laws  run  the  mind :  inter- 
est, shifting  hither  and  thither,  deflects  it;  and 
attention,  as  we  shall  later  see,  steers  it  and  keeps 
it  from  too  zigzag  a  course. 

To  grasp  these  factors  clearly  gives  one  a  solid 
and  simple  understanding  of  the  psychological 
machinery.  The  'nature,'  the  'character,'  of  an 
individual  means  really  nothing  but  the  habitual 
form  of  his  associations.  To  break  up  bad  associa- 
tions or  wrong  ones,  to  build  others  in,  to  guide 
the  associative  tendencies  into  the  most  fruitful 
channels,  is  the  educator's  principal  task.  But 
here,  as  with  all  other  simple  principles,  the  dif- 
ficulty lies  in  the  application.  Psychology  can 
state  the  laws :  concrete  tact  and  talent  alone  can 
work  them  to  useful  results. 

Meanwhile  it  is  a  matter  of  the  commonest  expe- 
rience that  our  minds  may  pass  from  one  object  to 
another  by  various  intermediary  fields  of  conscious- 
ness. The  indeterminateness  of  our  paths  of  asso- 
ciation in  concrete  is  thus  almost  as  striking  a  feat- 
ure of  them  as  the  uniformity  of  their  abstract 


INDETERMINATENESS   OF  ASSOCIATIONS      85 

form.  Start  from  any  idea  whatever,  and  the 
entire  range  of  your  ideas  is  potentially  at  your 
disposal.  If  we  take  as  the  associative  starting- 
point,  or  cue,  some  simple  word  which  I  pronounce 
before  you,  there  is  no  limit  to  the  possible  diver- 
sity of  suggestions  which  it  may  set  up  in  your 
minds.  Suppose  I  say  '  blue,'  for  example  :  some 
of  you  may  think  of  the  blue  sky  and  hot  weather 
from  which  we  now  are  suffering,  then  go  off  on 
thoughts  of  summer  clothing,  or  possibly  of  meteo- 
rology at  large ;  others  may  think  of  the  spectrum 
and  the  physiology  of  color-vision,  and  glide  into 
X-rays  and  recent  physical  speculations;  others 
may  think  of  blue  ribbons,  or  of  the  blue  flowers 
on  a  friend's  hat,  and  proceed  on  lines  of  personal 
reminiscence.  To  others,  again,  etymology  and 
linguistic  thoughts  may  be  suggested;  or  blue 
may  be  '  apperceived '  as  a  synonym  for  melan- 
choly, and  a  train  of  associates  connected  with 
morbid  psychology  may  proceed  to  unroll  them- 
selves. 

In  the  same  person,  the  same  word  heard  at 
different  times  will  provoke,  in  consequence  of 
the  varying  marginal  preoccupations,  either  one  of 
a  number  of  diverse  possible  associative  sequences. 
Professor  Miinsterberg  performed  this  experiment 


86  TALKS   TO   TEACHERS 

methodically,  using  the  same  words  four  times 
over,  at  three-month  intervals,  as  '  cues '  for  four 
different  persons  who  were  the  subjects  of  obser- 
vation. He  found  almost  no  constancy  in  their 
associations  taken  at  these  different  times.  In 
short,  the  entire  potential  content  of  one's  con- 
sciousness is  accessible  from  any  one  of  its  points. 
This  is  why  we  can  never  work  the  laws  of  asso- 
ciation forward:  starting  from  the  present  field 
as  a  cue,  we  can  never  cipher  out  in  advance  just 
what  the  person  will  be  thinking  of  five  minutes 
later.  The  elements  which  may  become  prepo- 
tent in  the  process,  the  parts  of  each  successive 
field  round  which  the  associations  shall  chiefly 
turn,  the  possible  bifurcations  of  suggestion,  are 
so  numerous  and  ambiguous  as  to  be  indetermina- 
ble before  the  fact.  But,  although  we  cannot 
work  the  laws  of  association  forward,  we  can 
always  work  them  backwards.  We  cannot  say 
now  what  we  shall  find  ourselves  thinking  of 
five  minutes  hence ;  but,  whatever  it  may  be,  we 
shall  then  be  able  to  trace  it  through  intermediary 
links  of  contiguity  or  similarity  to  what  we  are 
thinking  now.  What  so  baffles  our  prevision  is 
the  shifting  part  played  by  the  margin  and  focus  — 
in  fact,  by  each  element  by  itself  of  the  margin  or 
focus  —  in  calling  up  the  next  ideas. 


SOME  CUES  ABE   PREPOTENT  87 

For  example,  I  am  reciting  *  Locksley  Hall,'  in 
order  to  divert  my  mind  from  a  state  of  suspense 
that  I  am  in  concerning  the  will  of  a  relative  that 
is  dead.  The  will  still  remains  in  the  mental 
background  as  an  extremely  marginal  or  ultra- 
marginal  portion  of  my  field  of  consciousness ;  but 
the  poem  fairly  keeps  my  attention  from  it,  until 
I  come  to  the  line,  "  I,  the  heir  of  all  the  ages,  in 
the  foremost  files  of  time."  The  words  'I,  the 
heir,'  immediately  make  an  electric  connection 
with  the  marginal  thought  of  the  will;  that,  in 
turn,  makes  my  heart  beat  with  anticipation  of 
my  possible  legacy,  so  that  I  throw  down  the  book 
and  pace  the  floor  excitedly  with  visions  of  my 
future  fortune  pouring  through  my  mind.  Any 
portion  of  the  field  of  consciousness  that  has  more 
potentialities  of  emotional  excitement  than  an- 
other may  thus  be  roused  to  predominant  activ- 
ity ;  and  the  shifting  play  of  interest  now  in  one 
portion,  now  in  another,  deflects  the  currents  in 
all  sorts  of  zigzag  ways,  the  mental  activity  run- 
ning hither  and  thither  as  the  sparks  run  in 
burnt-up  paper. 

One  more  point,  and  I  shall  have  said  as  much 
to  you  as  seems  necessary  about  the  process  of 
association. 


88  TALKS   TO   TEACHERS 

You  just  saw  how  a  single  exciting  word  may 
call  up  its  own  associates  prepotently,  and  deflect 
our  whole  train  of  thinking  from  the  previous 
track.  The  fact  is  that  every  portion  of  the  field 
tends  to  call  up  its  own  associates ;  but,  if  these 
associates  be  severally  different,  there  is  rivalry, 
and  as  soon  as  one  or  a  few  begin  to  be  effective 
the  others  seem  to  get  siphoned  out,  as  it  were, 
and  left  behind.  Seldom,  however,  as  in  our  ex- 
ample, does  the  process  seem  to  torn  round  a 
single  item  in  the  mental  field,  or  even  round  the 
entire  field  that  is  immediately  in  the  act  of  pass- 
ing. It  is  a  matter  of  constellation,  into  which 
portions  of  fields  that  are  already  past  especially 
seem  to  enter  and  have  their  say.  Thus,  to  go 
back  to  *  Locksley  Hall,'  each  word  as  I  recite  it 
in  its  due  order  is  suggested  not  solely  by  the 
previous  word  now  expiring  on  my  lips,  but  it  is 
rather  the  effect  of  all  the  previous  words,  taken 
together,  of  the  verse.  "  Ages,"  for  example,  calls 
up  "  in  the  foremost  files  of  time,"  when  preceded 
by  "  I,  the  heir  of  all  the  " — ;  but,  when  preceded 
by,  "for  I  doubt  not  through  the," — it  calls  up 
"one  increasing  purpose  runs."  Similarly,  if  I 
write  on  the  blackboard  the  letters  ABODE 
F,  .  .  .  they  probably  suggest  to  you  G  H  I.  .  .  . 


THE  PUPIL   AN   ASSOCIATING  MACHINE       89 

But,  if  I  write  A  B  A  D  D  E  F,  if  they  suggest 
anything,  they  suggest  as  their  complement  E  C  T 
orEFICIENCY.  The  result  depending  on 
the  total  constellation,  even  though  most  of  the 
single  items  be  the  same. 

My  practical  reason  for  mentioning  this  law  is 
this,  that  it  follows  from  it  that,  in  working  asso- 
ciations into  your  pupils'  minds,  you  must  not  rely 
on  single  cues,  but  multiply  the  cues  as  much  as 
possible.  Couple  the  desired  reaction  with  numer- 
ous constellations  of  antecedents, —  don't  always 
ask  the  question,  for  example,  in  the  same  way ; 
don't  use  the  same  kind  of  data  in  numerical 
problems ;  vary  your  illustrations,  etc.,  as  much  as 
you  can.  When  we  come  to  the  subject  of  mem- 
ory, we  shall  learn  still  more  about  this. 

So  much,  then,  for  the  general  subject  of  asso- 
ciation. In  leaving  it  for  other  topics  (in  which, 
however,  we  shall  abundantly  find  it  involved 
again),  I  cannot  too  strongly  urge  you  to  acquire 
a  habit  of  thinking  of  your  pupils  in  associative 
terms.  All  governors  of  mankind,  from  doctors 
and  jail-wardens  to  demagogues  and  statesmen, 
instinctively  come  so  to  conceive  their  charges. 
If  you  do  the  same,  thinking  of  them  (however 
else  you  may  think  of  them  besides)  as  so  many 


90  TALKS   TO   TEACHERS 

little  systems  of  associating  machinery,  you  will 
be  astonished  at  the  intimacy  of  insight  into  their 
operations  and  at  the  practicality  of  the  results 
which  you  will  gain.  We  think  of  our  acquain- 
tances, for  example,  as  characterized  by  certain 
'tendencies.'  These  tendencies  will  in  almost 
every  instance  prove  to  be  tendencies  to  associa- 
tion. Certain  ideas  in  them  are  always  followed 
by  certain  other  ideas,  these  by  certain  feelings 
and  impulses  to  approve  or  disapprove,  assent 
or  decline.  If  the  topic  arouse  one  of  those  first 
ideas,  the  practical  outcome  can  be  pretty  well 
foreseen.  'Types  of  character'  in  short  are 
largely  types  of  association. 


INTEREST 

AT  our  last  meeting  I  treated  of  the  native  ten- 
dencies of  the  pupil  to  react  in  characteristically 
definite  ways  upon  different  stimuli  or  exciting 
circumstances.  In  fact,  I  treated  of  the  pupil's  in- 
stincts. Now  some  situations  appeal  to  special 
instincts  from  the  very  outset,  and  others  fail  to 
do  so  until  the  proper  connections  have  been  or- 
ganized in  the  course  of  the  person's  training. 
We  say  of  the  former  set  of  objects  or  situations 
that  they  are  interesting  in  themselves  and  origi- 
nally. Of  the  latter  we  say  that  they  are  natively 
uninteresting,  and  that  interest  in  them  has  first 
to  be  acquired. 

No  topic  has  received  more  attention  from  peda- 
gogical writers  than  that  of  interest.  It  is  the 
natural  sequel  to  the  instincts  we  so  lately  dis- 
cussed, and  it  is  therefore  well  fitted  to  be  the 
next  subject  which  we  take  up. 

Since  some  objects  are  natively  interesting  and 
in  others  interest  is  artificially  acquired,  the 


92  TALKS   TO   TEACHERS 

teacher  must  know  which  the  natively  interesting 
ones  are ;  for,  as  we  shall  see  immediately,  other 
objects  can  artificially  acquire  an  interest  only 
through  first  becoming  associated  with  some  of 
these  natively  interesting  things. 

The  native  interests  of  children  lie  altogether  in 
the  sphere  of  sensation.  Novel  things  to  look  at 
or  novel  sounds  to  hear,  especially  when  they  in- 
volve the  spectacle  of  action  of  a  violent  sort,  will 
always  divert  the  attention  from  abstract  concep- 
tions of  objects  verbally  taken  in.  The  grimace 
that  Johnny  is  making,  the  spitballs  that  Tommy 
is  ready  to  throw,  the  dog-fight  in  the  street,  or 
the  distant  firebells  ringing, —  these  are  the  rivals 
with  which  the  teacher's  powers  of  being  inter- 
esting have  incessantly  to  cope.  The  child  will 
always  attend  more  to  what  a  teacher  does  than 
to  what  the  same  teacher  says.  During  the  per- 
formance of  experiments  or  while  the  teacher  is 
drawing  on  the  blackboard,  the  children  are  tran- 
quil and  absorbed.  I  have  seen  a  roomful  of  col- 
lege students  suddenly  become  perfectly  still,  to 
look  at  their  professor  of  physics  tie  a  piece  of 
string  around  a  stick  which  he  was  going  to  use 
in  an  experiment,  but  immediately  grow  restless 
when  he  began  to  explain  the  experiment.  A 


NATIVELY  INTERESTING   THINGS  93 

lady  told  me  that  one  day,  during  a  lesson,  she 
was  delighted  at  having  captured  so  completely 
the  attention  of  one  of  her  young  charges.  He 
did  not  remove  his  eyes  from  her  face;  but  he 
said  to  her  after  the  lesson  was  over,  "  I  looked  at 
you  all  the  time,  and  your  upper  jaw  did  not 
move  once !  "  That  was  the  only  fact  that  he  had 
taken  in. 

Living  things,  then,  moving  things,  or  things 
that  savor  of  danger  or  of  blood,  that  have  a  dra- 
matic quality, —  these  are  the  objects  natively  in- 
teresting to  childhood,  to  the  exclusion  of  almost 
everything  else;  and  the  teacher  of  young  chil- 
dren, until  more  artificial  interests  have  grown  up, 
will  keep  in  touch  with  her  pupils  by  constant 
appeal  to  such  matters  as  these.  Instruction  must 
be  carried  on  objectively,  experimentally,  anec- 
dotally.  The  blackboard-drawing  and  story-tell- 
ing must  constantly  come  in.  But  of  course  these 
methods  cover  only  the  first  steps,  and  carry  one 
but  a  little  way. 

Can  we  now  formulate  any  general  principle  by 
which  the  later  and  more  artificial  interests  con- 
nect themselves  with  these  early  ones  that  the 
child  brings  with  him  to  the  school? 

Fortunately,  we  can :  there  is  a  very  simple  law 


94  TALKS   TO   TEACHERS 

that  relates  the  acquired  and  the  native  interests 
with  each  other. 

Any  object  not  interesting  in  itself  may  become 
interesting  through  becoming  associated  with  an 
object  in  which  an  interest  already  exists.  The  two 
associated  objects  grow,  as  it  were,  together :  the 
interesting  portion  sheds  its  quality  over  the  whole; 
and  thus  things  not  interesting  in  their  own  right 
borrow  an  interest  which  becomes  as  real  and  as 
strong  as  that  of  any  natively  interesting  thing. 
The  odd  circumstance  is  that  the  borrowing  does 
not  impoverish  the  source,  the  objects  taken  to- 
gether being  more  interesting,  perhaps,  than  the 
originally  interesting  portion  was  by  itself. 

This  is  one  of  the  most  striking  proofs  of  the 
range  of  application  of  the  principle  of  association 
of  ideas  in  psychology.  An  idea  will  infect  an- 
other with  its  own  emotional  interest  when  they 
have  become  both  associated  together  into  any 
sort  of  a  mental  total.  As  there  is  no  limit  to 
the  various  associations  into  which  an  interest- 
ing idea  may  enter,  one  sees  in  how  many  ways 
an  interest  may  be  derived. 

You  will  understand  this  abstract  statement 
easily  if  I  take  the  most  frequent  of  concrete  ex- 
amples,—  the  interest  which  things  borrow  from 


HOW   INTEREST   IS   ACQUIRED  90 

their  connection  with  our  own  personal  welfare. 
The  most  natively  interesting  object  to  a  man  is 
his  own  personal  self  and  its  fortunes.  We  ac- 
cordingly see  that  the  moment  a  thing  becomes 
connected  with  the  fortunes  of  the  self,  it  forthwith 
becomes  an  interesting  thing.  Lend  the  child  his 
books,  pencils,  and  other  apparatus:  then  give 
them  to  him,  make  them  his  own,  and  notice  the 
new  light  with  which  they  instantly  shine  in  his 
eyes.  He  takes  a  new  kind  of  care  of  them  alto- 
gether. In  mature  life,  all  the  drudgery  of  a 
man's  business  or  profession,  intolerable  in  itself, 
is  shot  through  with  engrossing  significance  be- 
cause he  knows  it  to  be  associated  with  his  per- 
sonal fortunes.  What  more  deadly  uninteresting 
object  can  there  be  than  a  railroad  time-table? 
Yet  where  will  you  find  a  more  interesting  object 
if  you  are  going  on  a  journey,  and  by  its  means 
can  find  your  train  ?  At  such  times  the  time-table 
will  absorb  a  man's  entire  attention,  its  interest 
being  borrowed  solely  from  its  relation  to  his  per- 
sonal life.  From  all  these  facts  there  emerges  a 
very  simple  abstract  programme  for  the  teacher  to 
follow  in  keeping  the  attention  of  the  child :  Begin 
with  the  line  of  his  native  interests,  and  offer  him 
objects  that  have  some  immediate  connection  with 


96  TALKS   TO   TEACHERS 

these.  The  kindergarten  methods,  the  object- 
teaching  routine,  the  blackboard  and  manual-train- 
ing work, —  all  recognize  this  feature.  Schools 
in  which  these  methods  preponderate  are  schools 
where  discipline  is  easy,  and  where  the  voice  of 
the  master  claiming  order  and  attention  in  threat- 
ening tones  need  never  be  heard. 

Next,  step  by  step,  connect  with  these  first  objects 
and  experiences  the  later  objects  and  ideas  which 
you  wish  to  instill.  Associate  the  new  with  the  old 
in  some  natural  and  telling  way,  so  that  the  interest, 
being  shed  along  from  point  to  point,  finally  suffuses 
the  entire  system  of  objects  of  thought. 

This  is  the  abstract  statement ;  and,  abstractly, 
nothing  can  be  easier  to  understand.  It  is  in  the 
fulfilment  of  the  rule  that  the  difficulty  lies ;  for 
the  difference  between  an  interesting  and  a  tedious 
teacher  consists  in  little  more  than  the  inventive- 
ness by  which  the  one  is  able  to  mediate  these 
associations  and  connections,  and  in  the  dulness  in 
discovering  such  transitions  which  the  other  shows. 
One  teacher's  mind  will  fairly  coruscate  with 
points  of  connection  between  the  new  lesson  and 
the  circumstances  of  the  children's  other  experi- 
ence. Anecdotes  and  reminiscences  will  abound 
in  her  talk ;  and  the  shuttle  of  interest  will  shoot 


SOMETHING   TO   ATTEND   WITH  97 

backward  and  forward,  weaving  the  new  and  the 
old  together  in  a  lively  and  entertaining  way. 
Another  teacher  has  no  such  inventive  fertility, 
and  his  lesson  will  always  be  a  dead  and  heavy 
thing.  This  is  the  psychological  meaning  of  the 
Herbartian  principle  of  'preparation'  for  each 
lesson,  and  of  correlating  the  new  with  the  old. 
It  is  the  psychological  meaning  of  that  whole 
method  of  concentration  in  studies  of  which  you 
have  been  recently  hearing  so  much.  When  the 
geography  and  English  and  history  and  arithmetic 
simultaneously  make  cross-references  to  one  an- 
other, you  get  an  interesting  set  of  processes  all 
along  the  line. 

If,  then,  you  wish  to  insure  the  interest  of  your 
pupils,  there  is  only  one  way  to  do  it ;  and  that  is 
to  make  certain  that  they  have  something  in  their 
minds  to  attend  with,  when  you  begin  to  talk. 
That  something  can  consist  in  nothing  but  a 
previous  lot  of  ideas  already  interesting  in  them- 
selves, and  of  such  a  nature  that  the  incoming 
novel  objects  which  you  present  can  dovetail  into 
them  and  form  with  them  some  kind  of  a  logically 
associated  or  systematic  whole.  Fortunately,  al- 
most any  kind  of  a  connection  is  sufficient  to 


98  TALKS   TO   TEACHERS 

carry  the  interest  along.  What  a  help  is  our 
Philippine  war  at  present  in  teaching  geography ! 
But  before  the  war  you  could  ask  the  children  if 
they  ate  pepper  with  their  eggs,  and  where  they 
supposed  the  pepper  came  from.  Or  ask  them  if 
glass  is  a  stone,  and,  if  not,  why  not ;  and  then  let 
them  know  how  stones  are  formed  and  glass  manu- 
factured. External  links  will  serve  as  well  as 
those  that  are  deeper  and  more  logical.  But  in- 
terest, once  shed  upon  a  subject,  is  liable  to  re- 
main always  with  that  subject.  Our  acquisitions 
become  in  a  measure  portions  of  our  personal  self; 
and  little  by  little,  as  cross-associations  multiply 
and  habits  of  familiarity  and  practice  grow,  the 
entire  system  of  our  objects  of  thought  consoli- 
dates, most  of  it  becoming  interesting  for  some 
purposes  and  in  some  degree. 

An  adult  man's  interests  are  almost  every  one  of 
them  intensely  artificial :  they  have  slowly  been 
built  up.  The  objects  of  professional  interest  are 
most  of  them,  in  their  original  nature,  repulsive ; 
but  by  their  connection  with  such  natively  excit- 
ing objects  as  one's  personal  fortune,  one's  social 
responsibilities,  and  especially  by  the  force  of  in- 
veterate habit,  they  grow  to  be  the  only  things  for 
which  in  middle  life  a  man  profoundly  cares. 


THE   SYSTEM   OF   OUR  INTERESTS  99 

But  in  all  these  the  spread  and  consolidation 
have  followed  nothing  but  the  principles  first  laid 
down.  If  we  could  recall  for  a  moment  our  whole 
individual  history,  we  should  see  that  our  pro- 
fessional ideals  and  the  zeal  they  inspire  are  due 
to  nothing  but  the  slow  accretion  of  one  mental 
object  to  another,  traceable  backward  from  point 
to  point  till  we  reach  the  moment  when,  in  the 
nursery  or  in  the  schoolroom,  ]some  little  story 
told,  some  little  object  shown,  some  little  opera- 
tion witnessed,  brought  the  first  new  object  and 
new  interest  within  our  ken  by  associating  it  with 
some  one  of  those  primitively  there.  The  interest 
now  suffusing  the  whole  system  took  its  rise  in 
that  little  event,  so  insignificant  to  us  now  as  to 
be  entirely  forgotten.  As  the  bees  in  swarming 
cling  to  one  another  in  layers  till  the  few  are 
reached  whose  feet  grapple  the  bough  from  which 
the  swarm  depends;  so  with  the  objects  of  our 
thinking, —  they  hang  to  each  other  by  associated 
links,  but  the  original  source  of  interest  in  all  of 
them  is  the  native  interest  which  the  earliest  one 
once  possessed. 


XI. 

ATTENTION 

WHOEVEB  treats  of  interest  inevitably  treats  of 
attention,  for  to  say  that  an  object  is  interesting 
is  only  another  way  of  saying  that  it  excites  atten- 
tion. But  in  addition  to  the  attention  which 
any  object  already  interesting  or  just  becoming 
interesting  claims  —  passive  attention  or  sponta- 
neous attention,  we  may  call  it  —  there  is  a  more 
deliberate  attention, —  voluntary  attention  or  atten- 
tion with  effort,  as  it  is  called, —  which  we  can  give 
to  objects  less  interesting  or  uninteresting  in  them- 
selves. The  distinction  between  active  and  pas- 
sive attention  is  made  in  all  books  on  psychology, 
and  connects  itself  with  the  deeper  aspects  of  the 
topic.  From  our  present  purely  practical  point  of 
view,  however,  it  is  not  necessary  to  be  intricate ; 
and  passive  attention  to  natively  interesting  ma- 
terial requires  no  further  elucidation  on  this  occa- 
sion. All  that  we  need  explicitly  to  note  is  that, 
the  more  the  passive  attention  is  relied  on,  by 
keeping  the  material  interesting ;  and  the  less  the 


ATTENTION  AND   GENIUS  101 

kind  of  attention  requiring  effort  is  appealed  to ; 
the  more  smoothly  and  pleasantly  the  class-room 
work  goes  on.  I  must  say  a  few  more  words, 
however,  about  this  latter  process  of  voluntary 
and  deliberate  attention. 

One  often  hears  it  said  that  genius  is  nothing 
but  a  power  of  sustained  attention,  and  the  popu- 
lar impression  probably  prevails  that  men  of 
genius  are  remarkable  for  their  voluntary  powers 
in  this  direction.  But  a  little  introspective  obser- 
vation will  show  any  one  that  voluntary  attention 
cannot  be  continuously  sustained, —  t hat  it  comes  in 
beats.  When  we  are  studying  an  uninteresting 
subject,  if  our  mind  tends  to  wander,  we  have  to 
bring  back  our  attention  every  now  and  then  by 
using  distinct  pulses  of  effort,  which  revivify  the 
topic  for  a  moment,  the  mind  then  running  on  for 
a  certain  number  of  seconds  or  minutes  with  spon- 
taneous interest,  until  again  some  intercurrent 
idea  captures  it  and  takes  it  off.  Then  the  proc- 
esses of  volitional  recall  must  be  repeated  once 
more.  Voluntary  attention,  in  short,  is  only  a 
momentary  affair.  The  process,  whatever  it  is, 
exhausts  itself  in  the  single  act ;  and,  unless  the 
matter  is  then  taken  in  hand  by  some  trace  of 
interest  inherent  in  the  subject,  the  mind  fails  to 


102  TALKS   TO   TEACHERS 

follow  it  at  all.  The  sustained  attention  of  the 
genius,  sticking  to  his  subject  for  hours  together, 
is  for  the  most  part  of  the  passive  sort.  The 
minds  of  geniuses  are  full  of  copious  and  original 
associations.  The  subject  of  thought,  once  started, 
develops  all  sorts  of  fascinating  consequences.  The 
attention  is  led  along  one  of  these  to  another  in 
the  most  interesting  manner,  and  the  attention 
never  once  tends  to  stray  away. 

In  a  commonplace  mind,  on  the  other  hand,  a 
subject  develops  much  less  numerous  associates : 
it  dies  out  then  quickly;  and,  if  the  man  is  to 
keep  up  thinking  of  it  at  all,  he  must  bring  his 
attention  back  to  it  by  a  violent  wrench.  In  him, 
therefore,  the  faculty  of  voluntary  attention  re- 
ceives abundant  opportunity  for  cultivation  in 
daily  life.  It  is  your  despised  business  man,  your 
common  man  of  affairs,  (so  looked  down  on  by  the 
literary  awarders  of  fame)  whose  virtue  in  this 
regard  is  likely  to  be  most  developed  ;  for  he  has 
to  listen  to  the  concerns  of  so  many  uninteresting 
people,  and  to  transact  so  much  drudging  detail, 
that  the  faculty  in  question  is  always  kept  in 
training.  A  genius  on  the  contrary,  is  the  man 
in  whom  you  are  least  likely  to  find  the  power  of 
attending  to  anything  insipid  or  distasteful  in 


CONDITIONS   OP   VOLUNTARY  ATTENTION     103 

itself.  He  breaks  his  engagements,  leaves  his 
letters  unanswered,  neglects  his  family  duties  in- 
corrigibly, because  he  is  powerless  to  turn  his  at- 
tention down  and  back  from  those  more  interest- 
ing trains  of  imagery  with  which  his  genius  con- 
stantly occupies  his  mind. 

Voluntary  attention  is  thus  an  essentially  in- 
stantaneous affair.  You  can  claim  it,  for  your 
purposes  in  the  schoolroom,  by  commanding  it  in 
loud,  imperious  tones;  and  you  can  easily  get  it 
in  this  way.  But,  unless  the  subject  to  which  you 
thus  recall  their  attention  has  inherent  power  to 
interest  the  pupils,  you  will  have  got  it  for  only 
a  brief  moment;  and  their  minda  will  soon  be 
wandering  again.  To  keep  them  where  you  have 
called  them,  you  must  make  the  subject  too  inter- 
esting for  them  to  wander  again.  And  for  that 
there  is  one  prescription;  but  the  prescription, 
like  all  our  prescriptions,  is  abstract,  and,  to  get 
practical  results  from  it,  you  must  couple  it  with 
mother-wit. 

The  prescription  is  that  the  subject  must  be  made 
to  show  new  aspects  of  itself ;  to  prompt  new  ques- 
tions ;  in  a  word,  to  change.  From  an  unchanging 
subject  the  attention  inevitably  wanders  away. 
You  can  test  this  by  the  simplest  possible  case  of 


104  TALKS   TO   TEACHERS 

sensorial  attention.  Try  to  attend  steadfastly  to 
a  dot  on  the  paper  or  on  the  wall.  You  pres- 
ently find  that  one  or  the  other  of  two  things  has 
happened:  either  your  field  of  vision  has  become 
blurred,  so  that  you  now  see  nothing  distinct  at 
all,  or  else  you  have  involuntarily  ceased  to  look 
at  the  dot  in  question,  and  are  looking  at  some- 
thing else.  But,  if  you  ask  yourself  successive 
questions  about  the  dot, —  how  big  it  is,  how  far, 
of  what  shape,  what  shade  of  color,  etc.  j  in  other 
words,  if  you  turn  it  over,  if  you  think  of  it  in 
various  ways,  and  along  with  various  kinds  of  asso- 
ciates,—  you  can  keep  your  mind  on  it  for  a  com- 
paratively long  time.  This  is  what  the  genius 
does,  in  whose  hands  a  given  topic  coruscates  and 
grows.  And  this  is  what  the  teacher  must  do  for 
every  topic  if  he  wishes  to  avoid  too  frequent  ap- 
peals to  voluntary  attention  of  the  coerced  sort. 
In  all  respects,  reliance  upon  such  attention  as 
this  is  a  wasteful  method,  bringing  bad  temper 
and  nervous  wear  and  tear  as  well  as  imperfect 
results.  The  teacher  who  can  get  along  by  keep- 
ing spontaneous  interest  excited  must  be  regarded 
as  the  teacher  with  the  greatest  skill. 

There   is,  however,  in   all   schoolroom  work  a 
large  mass  of  material  that  must  be  dull  and  un- 


MECHANICAL   AIDS   TO   ATTENTION          105 

exciting,  and  to  which  it  is  impossible  in  any  con- 
tinous  way  to  contribute  an  interest  associatively 
derived.  There  are,  therefore,  certain  external 
methods,  which  every  teacher  knows,  of  volun- 
tarily arousing  the  attention  from  time  to  time 
and  keeping  it  upon  the  subject.  Mr.  Fitch  has 
a  lecture  on  the  art  of  securing  attention,  and  he 
briefly  passes  these  methods  in  review :  the  post- 
ure must  be  changed;  places  can  be  changed. 
Questions,  after  being  answered  singly,  may  occa- 
sionally be  answered  in  concert.  Elliptical  ques- 
tions may  be  asked,  the  pupil  supplying  the  miss- 
ing word.  The  teacher  must  pounce  upon  the 
most  listless  child,  and  wake  him  up.  The  habit 
of  prompt  and  ready  response  must  be  kept  up. 
Recapitulations,  illustrations,  examples,  novelty  of 
order,  and  ruptures  of  routine, —  all  these  are 
means  for  keeping  the  attention  alive  and  con- 
tributing a  little  interest  to  a  dull  subject.  Above 
all,  the  teacher  must  himself  be  alive  and  ready, 
and  must  use  the  contagion  of  his  own  example. 

But,  when  all  is  said  and  done,  the  fact  remains 
that  some  teachers  have  a  naturally  inspiring  pres- 
ence and  can  make  their  exercises  interesting, 
while  others  simply  cannot.  And  psychology  and 
general  pedagogy  here  confess  their  failure,  and 


106  TALKS   TO   TEACHERS 

hand  things  over  to  the  deeper  springs  of  human 
personality  to  conduct  the  task. 

A  brief  reference  to  the  physiological  theory  of 
the  attentive  process  may  serve  still  further  to 
elucidate  these  practical  remarks,  and  confirm 
them  by  showing  them  from  a  slightly  different 
point  of  view. 

What  is  the  attentive  process,  psychologically 
considered?  Attention  to  an  object  is  what  takes 
place  whenever  that  object  most  completely  oc- 
cupies the  mind.  For  simplicity's  sake  suppose 
the  object  to  be  an  object  of  sensation, —  a  figure 
approaching  us  at  a  distance  on  the  road.  It  is 
far  off,  barely  perceptible,  and  hardly  moving :  we 
do  not  know  with  certainty  whether  it  is  a  man 
or  not.  Such  an  object  as  this,  if  carelessly  looked 
at,  may  hardly  catch  our  attention  at  all  The  opti- 
cal impression  may  affect  solely  the  marginal  con- 
sciousness, while  the  mental  focus  keeps  engaged 
with  rival  things.  We  may  indeed  not  'see'  it 
till  some  one  points  it  out.  But,  if  so,  how  does 
he  point  it  out  ?  By  his  finger,  and  by  describing 
its  appearance, —  by  creating  a  premonitory  image 
of  where  to  look  and  of  what  to  expect  to  see. 
This  premonitory  image  is  already  an  excitement 


ATTENTION,  PHYSIOLOGICALLY  CONSIDERED   107 

of  the  same  nerve-centres  that  are  to  be  concerned 
with  the  impression.  The  impression  comes,  and 
excites  them  still  further ;  and  now  the  object  en- 
ters the  focus  of  the  field,  consciousness  being  sus- 
tained both  by  impression  and  by  preliminary  idea. 
But  the  maximum  of  attention  to  it  is  not  yet 
reached.  Although  we  see  it,  we  may  not  care 
for  it;  it  may  suggest  nothing  important  to  us; 
and  a  rival  stream  of  objects  or  of  thoughts  may 
quickly  take  our  mind  away.  If,  however,  our 
companion  defines  it  in  a  significant  way,  arouses 
in  the  mind  a  set  of  experiences  to  be  apprehended 
from  it, —  names  it  an  enemy  or  as  a  messenger 
of  important  tidings, — the  residual  and  marginal 
ideas  now  aroused,  so  far  from  being  its  rivals, 
become  its  associates  and  allies.  They  shoot  to- 
gether into  one  system  with  it;  they  converge 
upon  it ;  they  keep  it  steadily  in  focus ;  the  mind 
attends  to  it  with  maximum  power. 

The  attentive  process,  therefore,  at  its  maximum 
may  be  physiologically  symbolized  by  a  brain-cell 
played  on  in  two  ways,  from  without  and  from 
within.  Incoming  currents  from  the  periphery 
arouse  it,  and  collateral  currents  from  the  centres 
of  memory  and  imagination  re-enforce  these. 

In  this  process  the  incoming  impression  is  the 


108  TALKS   TO   TEACHERS 

newer  element ;  the  ideas  which  re-enforce  and  sus- 
tain it  are  among  the  older  possessions  of  the 
mind.  And  the  maximum  of  attention  may  then 
be  said  to  be  found  whenever  we  have  a  systema- 
tic harmony  or  unification  between  the  novel  and 
the  old.  It  is  an  odd  circumstance  that  neither 
the  old  nor  the  new,  by  itself,  is  interesting :  the 
absolutely  old  is  insipid ;  the  absolutely  new 
makes  no  appeal  at  all.  The  old  in  the  new  is 
what  claims  the  attention, —  the  old  with  a  slightly 
new  turn.  No  one  wants  to  hear  a  lecture  on  a 
subject  completely  disconnected  with  his  previous 
knowledge,  but  we  all  like  lectures  on  subjects  of 
which  we  know  a  little  already,  just  as,  in  the 
fashions,  every  year  must  bring  its  slight  modifi- 
cation of  last  year's  suit,  but  an  abrupt  jump  from 
the  fashion  of  one  decade  into  another  would  be 
distasteful  to  the  eye. 

The  genius  of  the  interesting  teacher  consists 
in  sympathetic  divination  of  the  sort  of  material 
with  which  the  pupil's  mind  is  likely  to  be  already 
spontaneously  engaged,  and  in  the  ingenuity  which 
discovers  paths  of  connection  from  that  material 
to  the  matters  to  be  newly  learned.  The  principle 
is  easy  to  grasp,  but  the  accomplishment  is 
difficult  in  the  extreme.  And  a  knowledge  of 


INTEREST  AND  EFFOKT  ABE  COMPATIBLES     109 

such  psychology  as  this  which  I  am  recalling  can 
no  more  make  a  good  teacher  than  a  knowledge 
of  the  laws  of  perspective  can  make  a  landscape 
painter  of  effective  skill. 

A  certain  doubt  may  now  occur  to  some  of 
you.  A  while  ago,  apropos  of  the  pugnacious 
instinct,  I  spoke  of  our  modern  pedagogy  as  being 
possibly  too  '  soft.'  You  may  perhaps  here  face 
me  with  my  own  words,  and  ask  whether  the 
exclusive  effort  on  the  teacher's  part  to  keep  the 
pupil's  spontaneous  interest  going,  and  to  avoid 
the  more  strenuous  path  of  voluntary  attention  to 
repulsive  work,  does  not  savor  also  of  sentimen- 
talism.  The  greater  part  of  schoolroom  work,  you 
say,  must,  in  the  nature  of  things,  always  be  repul- 
sive. To  face  uninteresting  drudgery  is  a  good 
part  of  life's  work.  Why  seek  to  eliminate  it 
from  the  school-room  or  minimize  the  sterner  law  ? 

A  word  or  two  will  obviate  what  might  perhaps 
become  a  serious  misunderstanding  here. 

It  is  certain  that  most  schoolroom  work,  till  it 
has  become  habitual  and  automatic,  is  repulsive, 
and  cannot  be  done  without  voluntarily  jerking 
back  the  attention  to  it  every  now  and  then. 
This  is  inevitable,  let  the  teacher  do  what  he  will 


110  TALKS   TO   TEACHERS 

It  flows  from  the  inherent  nature  of  the  subjects 
and  of  the  learning  mind.  The  repulsive  proc- 
esses of  verbal  memorizing,  of  discovering  steps 
of  mathematical  identity,  and  the  like,  must 
borrow  their  interest  at  first  from  purely  external 
sources,  mainly  from  the  personal  interests  with 
which  success  in  mastering  them  is  associated, 
such  as  gaining  of  rank,  avoiding  punishment,  not 
being  beaten  by  a  difficulty,  and  the  like.  With- 
out such  borrowed  interest,  the  child  could  not 
attend  to  them  at  all.  But  in  these  processes 
what  becomes  interesting  enough  to  be  attended 
to  is  not  thereby  attended  to  without  effort. 
Effort  always  has  to  go  on,  derived  interest,  for 
the  most  part,  not  awakening  attention  that  is 
easy,  however  spontaneous  it  may  now  have  to  be 
called.  The  interest  which  the  teacher,  by  his 
utmost  skill,  can  lend  to  the  subject,  proves  over 
and  over  again  to  be  only  an  interest  sufficient  to 
let  loose  the  effort.  The  teacher,  therefore,  need 
never  concern  himself  about  inventing  occasions 
where  effort  must  be  called  into  play.  Let  him 
still  awaken  whatever  sources  of  interest  in  the 
subject  he  can  by  stirring  up  connections  between 
it  and  the  pupil's  nature,  whether  in  the  line  of 
theoretic  curiosity,  of  personal  interest,  or  of  pug- 


INTEREST  AND  EFFORT  ARE  COMPATIBLES     111 

nacious  impulse.  The  laws  of  mind  will  then 
bring  enough  pulses  of  effort  into  play  to  keep  the 
pupil  exercised  in  the  direction  of  the  subject. 
There  is,  in  fact,  no  greater  school  of  effort  than 
the  steady  struggle  to  attend  to  immediately  re- 
pulsive or  difficult  objects  of  thought  which  have 
grown  to  interest  us  through  their  association  as 
means,  with  some  remote  ideal  end. 

The  Herbartian  doctrine  of  interest  ought  not, 
therefore,  in  principle  to  be  reproached  with  mak- 
ing pedagogy  soft.  If  it  do  so,  it  is  because  it  is 
unintelligently  carried  on.  Do  not,  then,  for  the 
mere  sake  of  discipline,  command  attention  from 
your  pupils  in  thundering  tones.  Do  not  too 
often  beg  it  from  them  as  a  favor,  nor  claim  it  as 
a  right,  nor  try  habitually  to  excite  it  by  preach- 
ing the  importance  of  the  subject.  Sometimes, 
indeed,  you  must  do  these  things ;  but,  the  more 
you  have  to  do  them,  the  less  skilful  teacher  you 
will  show  yourself  to  be.  Elicit  interest  from 
within,  by  the  warmth  with  which  you  care  for 
the  topic  yourself,  and  by  following  the  laws  I 
have  laid  down. 

If  the  topic  be  highly  abstract,  show  its  nature 
by  concrete  examples.  If  it  be  unfamiliar,  trace 
some  point  of  analogy  in  it  with  the  known.  If 


112  TALKS   TO   TEACHERS 

it  be  inhuman,  make  it  figure  as  part  of  a  story. 
If  it  be  difficult,  couple  its  acquisition  with  some 
prospect  of  personal  gain.  Above  all  things,  make 
sure  that  it  shall  run  through  certain  inner 
changes,  since  no  unvarying  object  can  possibly 
hold  the  mental  field  for  long.  Let  your  pupil 
wander  from  one  aspect  to  another  of  your  sub- 
ject, if  you  do  not  wish  him  to  wander  from  it 
altogether  to  something  else,  variety  in  unity  be- 
ing the  secret  of  all  interesting  talk  and  thought. 
The  relation  of  all  these  things  to  the  native 
genius  of  the  instructor  is  too  obvious  to  need 
comment  again. 

One  more  point,  and  I  am  done  with  the  subject 
of  attention.  There  is  unquestionably  a  great 
native  variety  among  individuals  in  the  type  of 
their  attention.  Some  of  us  are  naturally  scatter- 
brained, and  others  follow  easily  a  train  of  con- 
nected thoughts  without  temptation  to  swerve 
aside  to  other  subjects.  This  seems  to  depend  on 
a  difference  between  individuals  in  the  type  of 
their  field  of  consciousness.  In  some  persons  this 
is  highly  focalized  and  concentrated,  and  the  focal 
ideas  predominate  in  determining  association.  In 
others  we  must  suppose  the  margin  to  be  brighter, 


CAN  MIND-WANDEBDSG  BE   CURED          113 

and  to  be  filled  with  something  like  meteoric 
showers  of  images,  which  strike  into  it  at  random, 
displacing  the  focal  ideas,  and  carrying  association 
in  their  own  direction.  Persons  of  the  latter  type 
find  their  attention  wandering  every  minute,  and 
must  bring  it  back  by  a  voluntary  pull.  The 
others  sink  into  a  subject  of  meditation  deeply, 
and,  when  interrupted,  are  '  lost '  for  a  moment 
before  they  come  back  to  the  outer  world. 

The  possession  of  such  a  steady  faculty  of  at- 
tention is  unquestionably  a  great  boon.  Those 
who  have  it  can  work  more  rapidly,  and  with  less 
nervous  wear  and  tear.  I  am  inclined  to  think 
that  no  one  who  is  without  it  naturally  can  by 
any  amount  of  drill  or  discipline  attain  it  in  a  very 
high  degree.  Its  amount  is  probably  a  fixed  char- 
acteristic of  the  individual.  But  I  wish  to  make 
a  remark  here  which  I  shall  have  occasion  to 
make  again  in  other  connections.  It  is  that  no 
one  need  deplore  unduly  the  inferiority  in  himself 
of  any  one  elementary  faculty.  This  concentrated 
type  of  attention  is  an  elementary  faculty:  it  is 
one  of  the  things  that  might  be  ascertained  and 
measured  by  exercises  in  the  laboratory.  But, 
having  ascertained  it  in  a  number  of  persons,  we 
could  never  rank  them  in  a  scale  of  actual  and 


114  TALKS   TO   TEACHEES 

practical  mental  efficiency  based  on  its  degrees. 
The  total  mental  efficiency  of  a  man  is  the  result- 
ant of  the  working  together  of  all  his  faculties. 
He  is  too  complex  a  being  for  any  one  of  them  to 
have  the  casting  vote.  If  any  one  of  them  do 
have  the  casting  vote,  it  is  more  likely  to  be  the 
strength  of  his  desire  and  passion,  the  strength  of 
the  interest  he  takes  in  what  is  proposed.  Con- 
centration, memory,  reasoning  power,  inventive- 
ness, excellence  of  the  senses, — all  are  subsidiary 
to  this.  No  matter  how  scatter-brained  the  type 
of  a  man's  successive  fields  of  consciousness  may 
be,  if  he  really  care  for  a  subject,  he  will  return  to 
it  incessantly  from  his  incessant  wanderings,  and 
first  and  last  do  more  with  it,  and  get  more  results 
from  it,  than  another  person  whose  attention  may 
be  more  continuous  during  a  given  interval,  but 
whose  passion  for  the  subject  is  of  a  more  languid 
and  less  permanent  sort.  Some  of  the  most  effi- 
cient workers  I  know  are  of  the  ultra-scatter- 
brained type.  One  friend,  who  does  a  prodigious 
quantity  of  work,  has  in  fact  confessed  to  me  that, 
if  he  wants  to  get  ideas  on  any  subject,  he  sits 
down  to  work  at  something  else,  his  best  results 
coming  through  his  mind-wanderings.  This  is 
perhaps  an  epigrammatic  exaggeration  on  his  part ; 


ATTENTION,  CONCLUDED         115 

but  I  seriously  think  that  no  one  of  us  need  be  too 
much  distressed  at  his  own  shortcomings  in  this 
regard.  Our  mind  may  enjoy  but  little  comfort, 
may  be  restless  and  feel  confused ;  but  it  may  be 
extremely  efficient  all  the  same. 


XII. 

MEMORY 

WE  are  following  a  somewhat  arbitrary  order. 
Since  each  and  every  faculty  we  possess  is  either 
in  whole  or  in  part  a  resultant  of  the  play  of  our 
associations,  it  would  have  been  as  natural,  after 
treating  of  association,  to  treat  of  memory  as  to 
treat  of  interest  and  attention  next.  But,  since 
we  did  take  the  latter  operations  first,  we  must 
take  memory  now  without  farther  delay ;  for  the 
phenomena  of  memory  are  among  the  simplest 
and  most  immediate  consequences  of  the  fact  that 
our  mind  is  essentially  an  associating  machine. 
There  is  no  more  pre-eminent  example  for  exhib- 
iting the  fertility  of  the  laws  of  association  as 
principles  of  psychological  analysis.  Memory, 
moreover,  is  so  important  a  faculty  in  the  school- 
room that  you  are  probably  waiting  with  some 
eagerness  to  know  what  psychology  has  to  say 
about  it  for  your  help. 

In  old  times,  if  you  asked  a  person  to  explain 
why  he  came  to  be  remembering  at  that  moment 


SHALL  WE  CALL  MEMORY   A   FACULTY       117 

some  particular  incident  in  his  previous  life,  the 
only  reply  he  could  make  was  that  his  soul  is- 
endowed  with  a  faculty  called  memory ;  that  it  is 
the  inalienable  function  of  this  faculty  to  recol- 
lect; and  that,  therefore,  he  necessarily  at  that 
moment  must  have  a  cognition  of  that  portion  of 
the  past.  This  explanation  by  a  '  faculty '  is  one 
thing  which  explanation  by  association  has  super- 
seded altogether.  If,  by  saying  we  have  a  faculty 
of  memory,  you  mean  nothing  more  than  the  fact 
that  we  can  remember,  nothing  more  than  an 
abstract  name  for  our  power  inwardly  to  recall 
the  past,  there  is  no  harm  done :  we  do  have  the- 
faculty ;  for  we  unquestionably  have  such  a  power. 
But  if,  by  faculty,  you  mean  a  principle  of  expla- 
nation of  our  general  power  to  recall,  your  psychol- 
ogy is  empty.  The  associationist  psychology,  on 
the  other  hand,  gives  an  explanation  of  each  par- 
ticular fact  of  recollection ;  and,  in  so  doing,  it 
also  gives  an  explanation  of  the  general  faculty- 
The  '  faculty '  of  memory  is  thus  no  or  real  ulti- 
mate explanation ;  for  it  is  itself  explained  as  a 
result  of  the  association  of  ideas. 

Nothing  is  easier  than  to  show  you  just  what  I 
mean  by  this.  Suppose  I  am  silent  for  a  moment, 
and  then  say,  in  commanding  accents :  "  Remem- 


118  TALKS   TO  TEACHERS 

ber !  Recollect !  "  Does  your  faculty  of  memory 
obey  the  order,  and  reproduce  any  definite  image 
from  your  past?  Certainly  not.  It  stands  star- 
ing into  vacancy,  and  asking,  "  What  kind  of  a 
thing  do  you  wish  me  to  remember?"  It  needs, 
in  short,  a  cue.  But,  if  I  say,  remember  the  date 
of  your  birth,  or  remember  what  you  had  for 
breakfast,  or  remember  'the  succession  of  notes  in 
the  musical  scale ;  then  your  faculty  of  memory  im- 
mediately produces  the  required  result :  the  '  cue ' 
determines  its  vast  set  of  potentialities  toward  a 
particular  point.  And  if  you  now  look  to  see  how 
this  happens,  you  immediately  perceive  that  the 
cue  is  something  contiguously  associated  with  the 
thing  recalled.  The  words,  'date  of  my  birth,' 
have  an  ingrained  association  with  a  particular 
number,  month,  and  year;  the  words,  'breakfast 
this  morning,'  cut  off  all  other  lines  of  recall  ex- 
cept those  which  lead  to  coffee  and  bacon  and 
-eggs;  the  words,  'musical  scale,'  are  inveterate 
mental  neighbors  of  do,  re*,  mi,  fa,  sol,  la,  etc.  The 
laws  of  association  govern,  in  fact,  all  the  trains 
of  our  thinking  which  are  not  interrupted  by  sen- 
sations breaking  on  us  from  without.  Whatever 
appears  in  the  mind  must  be  introduced;  and, 
introduced,  it  is  as  the  associate  of  some- 


PHYSIOLOGICAL  BASIS   OF  MEMORY         119 

thing  already  there.  This  is  as  true  of  what  you 
are  recollecting  as  it  is  of  everything  else  you 
think  of. 

Reflection  will  show  you  that  there  are  peculi- 
arities in  your  memory  which  would  be  quite 
whimsical  and  unaccountable  if  we  were  forced 
to  regard  them  as  the  product  of  a  purely  spir- 
itual faculty.  Were  memory  such  a  faculty, 
granted  to  us  solely  for  its  practical  use,  we 
ought  to  remember  easiest  whatever  we  most 
needed  to  remember;  and  frequency  of  repeti- 
tion, recency,  and  the  like,  would  play  no  part 
in  the  matter.  That  we  should  best  remember 
frequent  things  and  recent  things,  and  forget 
things  that  are  ancient  or  were  experienced  only 
once,  could  only  be  regarded  as  an  incomprehen- 
sible anomaly  on  such  a  view.  But  if  we  remem- 
ber because  of  our  associations,  and  if  these  are, 
(as  the  physiological  psychologists  believe)  due  to 
our  organized  brain-paths,  we  easily  see  how  the 
law  of  recency  and  repetition  should  prevail. 
Paths  frequently  and  recently  ploughed  are  those 
that  lie  most  open,  those  which  may  be  expected 
most  easily  to  lead  to  results.  The  laws  of  our 
memory,  as  we  find  them,  therefore,  are  incidents 
of  our  associational  constitution;  and,  when  we 


120  TALKS  TO   TEACHERS 

are  emancipated  from  the  flesh,  it  is  conceivable 
that  they  may  no  longer  continue  to  obtain. 

We  may  assume,  then,  that  recollection  is  a 
resultant  of  our  associative  processes,  these  them- 
selves in  the  last  analysis  being  most  probably  due 
to  the  workings  of  our  brain. 

Descending  more  particularly  into  the  faculty 
of  memory,  we  have  to  distinguish  between  its 
potential  aspect  as  a  magazine  or  storehouse  and 
its  actual  aspect  as  recollection  now  of  a  partic- 
ular event.  Our  memory  contains  all  sorts  of 
items  which  we  do  not  now  recall,  but  which  we 
may  recall,  provided  a  sufficient  cue  be  offered. 
Both  the  general  retention  and  the  special  recall 
are  explained  by  association.  An  educated  mem- 
ory depends  on  an  organized  system  of  associa- 
tions; and  its  goodness  depends  on  two  of  their 
peculiarities :  first,  on  the  persistency  of  the  asso- 
ciations ;  and,  second,  on  their  number. 

Let  us  consider  each  of  these  points  in  turn. 

First,  the  persistency  of  the  associations. —  This 
gives  what  may  be  called  the  quality  of  native 
retentiveness  to  the  individual.  If,  as  I  think 
we  are  forced  to,  we  consider  the  brain  to  be  the 
organic  condition  by  which  the  vestiges  of  our 


THE   GIFT   OF   ORGANIC   RETENTIVENESS     121 

experience  are  associated  with,  each  other,  we 
may  suppose  that  some  brains  are  *  wax  to  receive 
and  marble  to  retain.'  The  slightest  impressions 
made  on  them  abide.  Names,  dates,  prices,  an- 
ecdotes, quotations,  are  indelibly  retained,  their 
several  elements  fixedly  cohering  together,  so  that 
the  individual  soon  becomes  a  walking  cyclopaedia 
of  information.  All  this  may  occur  with  no  philo- 
sophic tendency  in  the  mind,  no  impulse  to  weave 
the  materials  acquired  into  anything  like  a  logical 
system.  In  the  books  of  anecdotes,  and,  more  re- 
cently, in  the  psychology-books,  we  find  recorded 
instances  of  monstrosities,  as  we  may  call  them,  of 
this  desultory  memory ;  and  they  are  often  other- 
wise very  stupid  men.  It  is,  of  course,  by  no 
means  incompatible  with  a  philosophic  mind ;  for 
mental  characteristics  have  infinite  capacities  for 
permutation.  And,  when  both  memory  and  phi- 
losophy combine  together  in  one  person,  then  in- 
deed we  have  the  highest  sort  of  intellectual 
efficiency.  Your  Walter  Scotts,  your  Leibnitzes, 
your  Gladstones,  and  your  Goethes,  all  your  folio 
copies  of  mankind,  belong  to  this  type.  Effi- 
ciency on  a  colossal  scale  would  indeed  seem  to 
require  it.  For,  although  your  philosophic  or 
systematic  mind  without  good  desultory  memory 


TALKS   TO   TEACHERS 

may  know  how  to  work  out  results  and  recollect 
where  in  the  books  to  find  them,  the  time  lost 
in  the  searching  process  handicaps  the  thinker, 
and  gives  to  the  more  ready  type  of  individual 
the  economical  advantage. 

The  extreme  of  the  contrasted  type,  the  type 
with  associations  of  small  persistency,  is  found  in 
those  who  have  almost  no  desultory  memory  at 
all.  If  they  are  also  deficient  in  logical  and  sys- 
tematizing power,  we  call  them  simply  feeble  in- 
tellects ;  and  no  more  need  to  be  said  about  them 
here.  Their  brain-matter,  we  may  imagine,  is  like 
a  fluid  jelly,  in  which  impressions  may  be  easily 
made,  but  are  soon  closed  over  again,  so  that  the 
brain  reverts  to  its  original  indifferent  state. 

But  it  may  occur  here,  just  as  in  other  gelati- 
nous substances,  that  an  impression  will  vibrate 
throughout  the  brain,  and  send  waves  into  other 
parts  of  it.  In  cases  of  this  sort,  although  the 
immediate  impression  may  fade  out  quickly,  it 
does  modify  the  cerebral  mass ;  for  the  paths  it 
makes  there  may  remain,  and  become  so  many 
avenues  through  which  the  impression  may  be  re- 
produced if  they  ever  get  excited  again.  And  its 
liability  to  reproduction  will  depend  of  course 
upon  the  variety  of  these  paths  and  upon  the  fre- 


THE   SECRET   OF   A  GOOD   MEMORY          12S 

quency  with  which  they  are  used.  Each  path  is 
in  fact  an  associated  process,  the  number  of  these 
associates  becoming  thus  to  a  great  degree  a  sub- 
stitute for  the  independent  tenacity  of  the  original 
impression.  As  I  have  elsewhere  written:  Each 
of  the  associates  is  a  hook  to  which  it  hangs,  a 
means  to  fish  it  up  when  sunk  below  the  surface. 
Together  they  form  a  network  of  attachments  by 
which  it  is  woven  into  the  entire  tissue  of  our 
thought.  The  '  secret  of  a  good  memory '  is  thus 
the  secret  of  forming  diverse  and  multiple  associa- 
tions with  every  fact  we  care  to  retain.  But  this 
forming  of  associations  with  a  fact, — what  is  it 
but  thinking  about  the  fact  as  much  as  possible  ? 
Briefly,  then,  of  two  men  with  the  same  outward 
experiences,  the  one  who  think*  over  his  experiences 
most,  and  weaves  them  into  the  most  systematic 
relations  with  each  other,  will  be  the  one  with  the 
best  memory. 

But,  if  our  ability  to  recollect  a  thing  be  so 
largely  a  matter  of  its  associations  with  other 
things  which  thus  becomes  its  cues,  an  important 
psedagogic  consequence  follows.  There  can  be  no 
improvement  of  the  general  or  elementary  faculty  of 
memory :  there  can  only  be  improvement  of  our  mem- 
ory for  special  systems  of  associated  things;  and 


124  TALKS   TO   TEACHEES 

this  latter  improvement  is  due  to  the  way  in 
which  the  things  in  question  are  woven  into  asso- 
ciation with  each  other  in  the  mind.  Intricately 
or  profoundly  woven,  they  are  held :  disconnected, 
they  tend  to  drop  out  just  in  proportion  as  the 
native  brain  retentiveness  is  poor.  And  no 
amount  of  training,  drilling,  repeating,  and  re- 
citing employed  upon  the  matter  of  one  system 
of  objects,  the  history-system,  for  example,  will 
in  the  least  improve  either  the  facility  or  the 
durability  with  which  objects  belonging  to  a 
wholly  disparate  system  —  the  system  of  facts  of 
chemistry,  for  instance  —  tend  to  be  retained. 
That  system  must  be  separately  worked  into  the 
mind  by  itself,  —  a  chemical  fact  which  is  thought 
about  in  connection  with  the  other  chemical  facts, 
tending  then  to  stay,  but  otherwise  easily  drop- 
ping out. 

We  have,  then,  not  so  much  a  faculty  of  mem- 
ory as  many  faculties  of  memory.  We  have  as 
many  as  we  have  systems  of  objects  habitually 
thought  of  in  connection  with  each  other.  A  given 
object  is  held  in  the  memory  by  the  associates  it 
has  acquired  within  its  own  system  exclusively. 
Learning  the  facts  of  another  system  will  in  no 
wise  help  it  to  stay  in  the  mind,  for  the  simple 


MEMOEIES   KATHER   THAN   MEMORY         125 

reason  that  it  has  no  '  cues '  within  that  other 
system. 

We  see  examples  of  this  on  every  hand. 
Most  men  have  a  good  memory  for  facts  con- 
nected with  their  own  pursuits.  A  college  ath- 
lete, who  remains  a  dunce  at  his  books,  may  amaze 
you  by  his  knowledge  of  the  '  records  '  at  various 
feats  and  games,  and  prove  himself  a  walking 
dictionary  of  sporting  statistics.  The  reason  is 
that  he  is  constantly  going  over  these  things  in  his 
mind,  and  comparing  and  making  series  of  them. 
They  form  for  him,  not  so  many  odd  facts,  but 
a  concept-system,  so  they  stick.  So  the  merchant 
remembers  prices,  the  politician  other  politicians' 
speeches  and  votes,  with  a  copiousness  which 
astonishes  outsiders,  but  which  the  amount  of 
thinking  they  bestow  on  these  subjects  easily 
explains. 

The  great  memory  for  facts  which  a  Darwin  or 
a  Spencer  reveal  in  their  books  is  not  incompati- 
ble with  the  possession  on  their  part  of  a  mind 
with  only  a  middling  degree  of  physiological  re- 
tentiveness.  Let  a  man  early  in  life  set  himself 
the  task  of  verifying  such  a  theory  as  that  of  evo- 
lution, and  facts  will  soon  cluster  and  cling  to  him 
like  grapes  to  their  stem.  Their  relations  to  the 


126  TALKS   TO   TEACHERS 

theory  will  hold  them  fast ;  and,  the  more  of  these 
the  mind  is  able  to  discern,  the  greater  the  erudi- 
tion will  become.  Meanwhile  the  theorist  may 
have  little,  if  any,  desultory  memory.  Unutiliza- 
ble  facts  may  be  unnoted  by  him,  and  forgotten 
as  soon  as  heard.  An  ignorance  almost  as  ency- 
clopedic as  his  erudition  may  coexist  with  the 
latter,  and  hide,  as  it  were,  within  the  interstices 
of  its  web.  Those  of  you  who  have  had  much  to 
do  with  scholars  and  savants  will  readily  think  of 
examples  of  the  class  of  mind  I  mean. 

The  best  possible  sort  of  system  into  which  to 
weave  an  object,  mentally,  is  a  rational  system,  or 
what  is  called  a  *  science.'  Place  the  thing  in  its 
pigeon-hole  in  a  classificatory  series;  explain  it 
logically  by  its  causes,  and  deduce  from  it  its 
necessary  effects ;  find  out  of  what  natural  law  it 
is  an  instance, —  and  you  then  know  it  in  the  best 
of  all  possible  ways.  A  '  science '  is  thus  the 
greatest  of  labor-saving  contrivances.  It  relieves 
the  memory  of  an  immense  number  of  details,  re- 
placing, as  it  does,  merely  contiguous  associations 
by  the  logical  ones  of  identity,  similarity,  or  anal- 
ogy. If  you  know  a  'law,'  you  may  discharge 
your  memory  of  masses  of  particular  instances, 
for  the  law  will  reproduce  them  for  you  whenever 


TECHNICAL  MNEMONICS  127 

you  require  them.  The  law  of  refraction,  for  ex- 
ample :  If  you  know  that,  you  can  with  a  pencil 
and  a  bit  of  paper  immediately  discern  how  a  con- 
vex lens,  a  concave  lens,  or  a  prism,  must  sever- 
ally alter  the  appearance  of  an  object.  But,  if 
you  don't  know  the  general  law,  you  must  charge 
your  memory  separately  with  each  of  the  three 
kinds  of  effect. 

A  '  philosophic '  system,  in  which  all  things 
found  their  rational  explanation  and  were  con- 
nected together  as  causes  and  effects,  would  be 
the  perfect  mnemonic  system,  in  which  the  great- 
est economy  of  means  would  bring  about  the 
greatest  richness  of  results.  So  that,  if  we  have 
poor  desultory  memories,  we  can  save  ourselves 
by  cultivating  the  philosophic  turn  of  mind. 

There  are  many  artificial  systems  of  mnemonics, 
some  public,  some  sold  as  secrets.  They  are  all 
so  many  devices  for  training  us  into  certain  me- 
thodical and  stereotyped  ways  of  thinking  about  the 
facts  we  seek  to  retain.  Even  were  I  competent, 
I  could  not  here  go  into  these  systems  in  any  de- 
tail. But  a  single  example,  from  a  popular  sys- 
tem, will  show  what  I  mean.  I  take  the  number- 
alphabet,  the  great  mnemonic  device  for  recollect- 
ing numbers  and  dates.  In  this  system  each  digit 


128  TALKS   TO   TEACHBES 

is  represented  by  a  consonant,  thus :  1  is  t  or  d ; 
2,  n;  3,  m;  4,  r;  5,  1;  6,  sh,j,  ch,  or  g ;  7,  c,  k,  g, 
or  qu  ;  8,  /  or  v  ;  9,  5  or  p;  0,  «,  <?,  or  z.  Suppose, 
now,  you  wish  to  remember  the  velocity  of  sound, 
1,142  feet  a  second:  £,  £,  r,  w,  are  the  letters  you 
must  use.  They  make  the  consonants  of  tight 
run,  and  it  would  be  a  '  tight  run '  for  you  to 
keep  up  such  a  speed.  So  1649,  the  date  of 
the  execution  of  Charles  L,  may  be  remembered 
by  the  word  sharp,  which  recalls  the  headsman's 
axe. 

Apart  from  the  extreme  difficulty  of  finding 
words  that  are  appropriate  in  this  exercise,  it  is 
clearly  an  excessively  poor,  trivial,  and  silly  way 
of  '  thinking '  about  dates ;  and  the  way  of  the 
historian  is  much  better.  He  has  a  lot  of  land- 
mark-dates already  in  his  mind.  He  knows  the 
historic  concatenation  of  events,  and  can  usually 
place  an  event  at  its  right  date  in  the  chronology- 
table,  by  thinking  of  it  in  a  rational  way,  referring 
it  to  its  antecedents,  tracing  its  concomitants  and 
consequences,  and  thus  ciphering  out  its  date  by 
connecting  it  with  theirs.  The  artificial  memory- 
systems,  recommending,  as  they  do,  such  irrational 
methods  of  thinking,  are  only  to  be  recommended 
for  the  first  landmarks  in  a  system,  or  for  such 


WHY   CRAMMING   IS   BAD  129 

purely  detached  facts  as  enjoy  no  rational  connec- 
tion with  the  rest  of  our  ideas.  Thus  the  student 
of  physics  may  remember  the  order  of  the  spectral 
colours  by  the  word  vibgyor  which  their  initial 
letters  make.  The  student  of  anatomy  may  re- 
member the  position  of  the  Mitral  valve  on  the 
Left  side  of  the  heart  by  thinking  that  L.  M. 
stands  also  for  '  long  meter '  in  the  hymn-books. 

You  now  see  why  '  cramming '  must  be  so  poor 
a  mode  of  study.  Cramming  seeks  to  stamp  things 
in  by  intense  application  immediately  before  the 
ordeal.  But  a  thing  thus  learned  can  form  but 
few  associations.  On  the  other  hand,  the  same 
thing  recurring  on  different  days,  in  different  con- 
texts, read,  recited  on,  referred  to  again  and  again, 
related  to  other  things  and  reviewed,  gets  well 
wrought  into  the  mental  structure.  This  is  the 
reason  why  you  should  enforce  on  your  pupils 
habits  of  continuous  application.  There  is  no 
moral  turpitude  in  cramming.  It  would  be  the 
best,  because  the  most  economical,  mode  of  study 
if  it  led  to  the  results  desired.  But  it  does  not, 
and  your  older  pupils  can  readily  be  made  to  see 
the  reason  why. 

It  follows  also,  from  what  has  been  said,  that 
the  popular  idea  that  '  the  Memory,'  in  the  sense  of 


130  TALKS   TO   TEACHERS 

a  general  elementary  faculty,  can  be  improved  by 
training,  is  a  great  mistake.  Your  memory  for 
facts  of  a  certain  class  can  be  improved  very  much 
by  training  in  that  class  of  facts,  because  the  in- 
coming new  fact  will  then  find  all  sorts  of  ana- 
logues and  associates  already  there,  and  these 
will  keep  it  liable  to  recall.  But  other  kinds  of 
fact  will  reap  none  of  that  benefit,  and,  unless  one 
have  been  also  trained  and  versed  in  their  class, 
will  be  at  the  mercy  of  the  mere  crude  retentive- 
ness  of  the  individual,  which,  as  we  have  seen,  is 
practically  a  fixed  quantity.  Nevertheless,  one 
often  hears  people  say :  "  A  great  sin  was  com- 
mitted against  me  in  my  youth:  my  teachers 
entirely  failed  to  exercise  my  memory.  If  they 
had  only  made  me  learn  a  lot  of  things  by  heart 
at  school,  I  should  not  be,  as  I  am  now,  forgetful 
of  everything  I  read  and  hear."  This  is  a  great 
mistake :  learning  poetry  by  heart  will  make  it 
easier  to  learn  and  remember  other  poetry,  but 
nothing  else ;  and  so  of  dates ;  and  so  of  chemis- 
try and  geography. 

But,  after  what  I  have  said,  I  am  sure  you  will 
need  no  farther  argument  on  this  point;  and  I 
therefore  pass  it  by. 


VERBAL  MEMORIZING  131 

But,  since  it  has  brought  me  to  speak  of  learn- 
ing things  by  heart,  I  think  that  a  general  prac- 
tical remark  about  verbal  memorizing  may  now 
not  be  out  of  place.  The  excesses  of  old-fash- 
ioned verbal  memorizing,  and  the  immense  ad- 
vantages of  object-teaching  in  the  earlier  stages 
of  culture,  have  perhaps  led  those  who  philoso- 
phize about  teaching  to  an  unduly  strong  reaction ; 
and  learning  things  by  heart  is  now  probably 
somewhat  too  much  despised.  For,  when  all  is 
said  and  done,  the  fact  remains  that  verbal  ma- 
terial is,  on  the  whole,  the  handiest  and  most  use- 
ful material  in  which  thinking  can  be  carried  on. 
Abstract  conceptions  are  far  and  away  the  most 
economical  instruments  of  thought,  and  abstract 
conceptions  are  fixed  and  incarnated  for  us  in 
words.  Statistical  inquiry  would  seem  to  show 
that,  as  men  advance  in  life,  they  tend  to  make 
less  and  less  use  of  visual  images,  and  more  and 
more  use  of  words.  One  of  the  first  things  that 
Mr.  Galton  discovered  was  that  this  appeared  to 
be  the  case  with  the  members  of  the  Royal  Society 
whom  he  questioned  as  to  their  mental  images. 
1  should  say,  therefore,  that  constant  exercise  in 
verbal  memorizing  must  still  be  an  indispensable 
feature  in  all  sound  education.  Nothing  is  more 


132  TALKS   TO   TEACHERS 

deplorable  than  that  inarticulate  and  helpless  sort 
of  mind  that  is  reminded  by  everything  of  some 
quotation,  case,  or  anecdote,  which  it  cannot  now 
exactly  recollect.  Nothing,  on  the  other  hand,  is 
more  convenient  to  its  possessor,  or  more  delight- 
ful to  his  comrades,  than  a  mind  able,  in  telling 
a  story,  to  give  the  exact  words  of  the  dialogue 
or  to  furnish  a  quotation  accurate  and  complete. 
In  every  branch  of  study  there  are  happily  turned, 
concise,  and  handy  formulas  which  in  an  incom- 
parable way  sum  up  results.  The  mind  that  can 
retain  such  formulas  is  in  so  far  a  superior  mind, 
and  the  communication  of  them  to  the  pupil 
ought  always  to  be  one  of  the  teacher's  favorite 
tasks. 

In  learning  'by  heart,'  there  are,  however, 
efficient  and  inefficient  methods ;  and,  by  making 
the  pupil  skilful  in  the  best  method,  the  teacher 
can  both  interest  him  and  abridge  the  task.  The 
best  method  is  of  course  not  to  'hammer  in'  the 
sentences,  by  mere  reiteration,  but  to  analyze  them, 
and  think.  For  example,  if  the  pupil  should  have 
to  learn  this  last  sentence,  let  him  first  strip  out 
its  grammatical  core,  and  learn,  "  The  best  method 
is  not  to  hammer  in,  but  to  analyze,"  and  then  add 
the  amplificative  and  restrictive  clauses,  bit  by  bit, 


thus :  "  The  best  method  is  of  course  not  to  ham- 
mer in  the  sentences,  but  to  analyze  them  and 
think."  Then  finally  insert  the  words  '  by  mere 
reiteration,'  and  the  sentence  is  complete,  and 
both  better  understood  and  quicker  remembered 
than  by  a  more  purely  mechanical  method. 

In  conclusion,  I  must  say  a  word  about  the  con- 
tributions to  our  knowledge  of  memory  which  have 
recently  come  from  the  laboratory-psychologists. 
Many  of  the  enthusiasts  for  scientific  or  brass-in- 
strument child-study  are  taking  accurate  measure- 
ments of  children's  elementary  faculties,  and 
among  these  what  we  may  call  immediate  memory 
admits  of  easy  measurement.  All  we  need  do  is 
to  exhibit  to  the  child  a  series  of  letters,  syllables, 
figures,  pictures,  or  what-not,  at  intervals  of  one, 
two,  three,  or  more  seconds,  or  to  sound  a  similar 
series  of  names  at  the  same  intervals,  within  his 
hearing,  and  then  see  how  completely  he  can  re- 
produce the  list,  either  directly,  or  after  an  inter- 
val of  ten,  twenty,  or  sixty  seconds,  or  some  longer 
space  of  time.  According  to  the  results  of  this 
exercise,  the  pupils  may  be  rated  in  a  memory- 
scale  ;  and  some  persons  go  so  far  as  to  think  that 
the  teacher  should  modify  her  treatment  of  the 


134  TALKS   TO   TEACKEBS 

child  according  to  the  strength  or  feebleness  of 
its  faculty  as  thus  made  known. 

Now  I  can  only  repeat  here  what  I  said  to  you 
when  treating  of  attention :  man  is  too  complex  a 
being  for  light  to  be  thrown  on  his  real  efficiency 
by  measuring  any  one  mental  faculty  taken  apart 
from  its  consensus  in  the  working  whole.  Such 
an  exercise  as  this,  dealing  with  incoherent  and 
insipid  objects,  with  no  logical  connection  with 
each  other,  or  practical  significance  outside  of  the 
'test,'  is  an  exercise  the  like  of  which  in  real 
life  we  are  hardly  ever  called  upon  to  perform. 
In  real  life,  our  memory  is  always  used  in  the  ser- 
vice of  some  interest :  we  remember  things  which 
we  care  for  or  which  are  associated  with  things 
we  care  for ;  and  the  child  who  stands  at  the  bot- 
tom of  the  scale  thus  experimentally  established 
might,  by  dint  of  the  strength  of  his  passion  for 
a  subject,  and  in  consequence  of  the  logical  asso- 
ciation into  which  he  weaves  the  actual  materials 
of  his  experience,  be  a  very  effective  memorizer 
indeed,  and  do  his  school-tasks  on  the  whole  much 
better  than  an  immediate  parrot  who  might  stand 
at  the  top  of  the  '  scientifically  accurate  '  list. 

This  preponderance  of  interest,  of  passion,  in 
determining  the  results  of  a  human  being's  work- 


ELEMENT AEY  DEFECTS  NOT  FATAX        135 

ing  life,  obtains  throughout.  No  elementary 
measurement,  capable  of  being  performed  in  a 
laboratory,  can  throw  any  light  on  the  actual 
efficiency  of  the  subject ;  for  the  vital  thing  about 
him,  his  emotional  and  moral  energy  and  dogged- 
ness,  can  be  measured  by  no  single  experiment, 
and  becomes  known  only  by  the  total  results  in  the 
long  run.  A  blind  man  like  Huber,  with  his  pas- 
sion for  bees  and  ants,  can  observe  them  through 
other  people's  eyes  better  than  these  can  through 
their  own.  A  man  born  with  neither  arms  nor 
legs,  like  the  late  Kavanagh,  M.  P.  —  and  what 
an  icy  heart  his  mother  must  have  had  about  him 
in  his  babyhood,  and  how  '  negative '  would  the 
laboratory-measurements  of  his  motor-functions 
have  been !  —  can  be  an  adventurous  traveller,  an 
equestrian  and  sportsman,  and  lead  an  athletic 
outdoor  life.  Mr.  Romanes  studied  the  element- 
ary rate  of  apperception  in  a  large  number  of 
persons  by  making  them  read  a  paragraph  as  fast 
as  they  could  take  it  in,  and  then  immediately 
write  down  all  they  could  reproduce  of  its  con- 
tents. He  found  astonishing  differences  in  the 
rapidity,  some  taking  four  times  as  long  as  others 
to  absorb  the  paragraph,  and  the  swiftest  readers 
being,  as  a  rule,  the  best  immediate  recollecters, 


136  TALKS  TO  TEACHERS 

too.  But  not, —  and  this  is  my  point, —  not  the 
most  intellectually  capable  subjects,  as  tested  by 
the  results  of  what  Mr.  Romanes  rightly  names 
'  genuine '  intellectual  work ;  for  he  tried  the  ex- 
periment with  several  highly  distinguished  men 
in  science  and  literature,  and  most  of  them  turned 
out  to  be  slow  readers. 

In  the  light  of  all  such  facts  one  may  well  be- 
lieve that  the  total  impression  which  a  perceptive 
teacher  will  get  of  the  pupil's  condition,  as  indi- 
cated by  his  general  temper  and  manner,  by  the 
listlessness  or  alertness,  by  the  ease  or  painfulness 
with  which  his  school  work  is  done,  will  be  of 
much  more  value  than  those  unreal  experimental 
tests,  those  pedantic  elementary  measurements  of 
fatigue,  memory,  association,  and  attention,  etc., 
which  are  urged  upon  us  as  the  only  basis  of  a 
genuinely  scientific  pedagogy.  Such  measure- 
ments can  give  us  useful  information  only  when 
we  combine  them  with  observations  made  without 
brass  instruments,  upon  the  total  demeanor  of  the 
measured  individual,  by  teachers  with  eyes  in 
their  heads  and  common  sense,  and  some  feeling 
for  the  concrete  facts  of  human  nature  in  their 
hearts. 

Depend  upon  it,  no  one  need  be  too  much  cast 


VARIOUS   TYPES   OF  IMAGINATION  137 

down  by  the  discovery  of  his  deficiency  in  any  ele- 
mentary faculty  of  the  mind.  "What  tells  in  life 
is  the  whole  mind  working  together,  and  the  de- 
ficiencies of  any  one  faculty  can  be  compensated 
by  the  efforts  of  the  rest.  You  can  be  an  artist 
without  visual  images,  a  reader  without  eyes,  a 
mass  of  erudition  with  a  bad  elementary  memory. 
In  almost  any  subject  your  passion  for  the  subject 
will  save  you.  If  you  only  care  enough  for  a 
result,  you  will  almost  certainly  attain  it.  If  you 
wish  to  be  rich,  you  will  be  rich ;  if  you  wish  to 
be  learned,  you  will  be  learned ;  if  you  wish  to  be 
good,  you  will  be  good.  Only  you  must,  then, 
really  wish  these  things,  and  wish  them  with  ex- 
clusiveness,  and  not  wish  at  the  same  time  a  hun- 
dred other  incompatible  things  just  as  strongly. 

One  of  the  most  important  discoveries  of  the 
4  scientific '  sort  that  have  recently  been  made  in 
psychology  is  that  of  Mr.  Galton  and  others  con- 
cerning the  great  variations  among  individuals  in 
the  type  of  their  imagination.  Every  one  is  now 
familiar  with  the  fact  that  human  beings  vary 
enormously  in  the  brilliancy,  completeness,  defi- 
niteness,  and  extent  of  their  visual  images.  These 
are  singularly  perfect  in  a  large  number  of  indi- 
viduals, and  in  a  few  are  so  rudimentary  as  hardly 


138  TALKS  TO   TEACHERS 

to  exist.  The  same  is  true  of  the  auditory  and 
motor  images,  and  probably  of  those  of  every 
kind ;  and  the  recent  discovery  of  distinct  brain- 
areas  for  the  various  orders  of  sensation  would 
seem  to  provide  a  physical  basis  for  such  varia- 
tions and  discrepancies.  The  facts,  as  I  said,  are 
nowadays  so  popularly  known  that  I  need  only 
remind  you  of  their  existence.  They  might 
seem  at  first  sight  of  practical  importance  to  the 
teacher;  and,  indeed,  teachers  have  been  recom- 
mended to  sort  their  pupils  in  this  way,  and  treat 
them  as  the  result  falls  out.  You  should  inter- 
rogate them  as  to  their  imagery,  it  is  said,  or 
exhibit  lists  of  written  words  to  their  eyes,  and 
then  sound  similar  lists  in  their  ears,  and  see  by 
which  channel  a  child  retains  most  words.  Then, 
in  dealing  with  that  child,  make  your  appeals 
predominantly  through  that  channel.  If  the 
class  were  very  small,  results  of  some  distinct- 
ness might  doubtless  thus  be  obtained  by  a  pains- 
taking teacher.  But  it  is  obvious  that  in  the  usual 
school-room  no  such  differentiation  of  appeal  is 
possible;  and  the  only  really  useful  practical 
lesson  that  emerges  from  this  analytic  psychology 
in  the  conduct  of  large  schools  is  the  lesson  al- 
ready reached  in  a  purely  empirical  way,  that 


SENSE-IMPRESSIONS   SHOULD   BE  VARIED     139 

the  teacher  ought  always  to  impress  the  class 
through  as  many  sensible  channels  as  he  can. 
Talk  and  write  and  draw  on  blackboard,  permit 
the  pupils  to  talk,  and  make  them  write  and  draw, 
exhibit  pictures,  plans,  and  curves,  have  your  dia- 
grams colored  differently  in  their  different  parts, 
etc. ;  and  out  of  the  whole  variety  of  impressions 
the  individual  child  will  find  the  most  lasting 
ones  for  himself.  In  all  primary  school  work  this 
principle  of  multiple  impressions  is  well  recog- 
nized, so  I  need  say  no  more  about  it  here. 

This  principle  of  multiplying  channels  and 
varying  associations  and  appeals  is  important, 
not  only  for  teaching  pupils  to  remember,  but 
for  teaching  them  to  understand.  It  runs,  in 
fact,  through  the  whole  teaching  art. 

One  word  about  the  unconscious  and  unrepro- 
ducible  part  of  our  acquisitions,  and  I  shall  have 
done  with  the  topic  of  memory. 

Professor  Ebbinghaus,  in  a  heroic  little  investi- 
gation into  the  laws  of  memory  which  he  per- 
formed a  dozen  or  more  years  ago  by  the  method 
of  learning  lists  of  nonsense  syllables,  devised  a 
method  of  measuring  the  rate  of  our  forgetfulness, 
which  lays  bare  an  important  law  of  the  mind. 


140  TALKS   TO   TEACHERS 

His  method  was  to  read  over  his  list  until  he 
could  repeat  it  once  by  heart  unhesitatingly. 
The  number  of  repetitions  required  for  this  was 
a  measure  of  the  difficulty  of  the  learning  in  each 
particular  case.  Now,  after  having  once  learned  a 
piece  in  this  way,  if  we  wait  five  minutes,  we  find 
it  impossible  to  repeat  it  again  in  the  same  unhes- 
itating manner.  We  must  read  it  over  again  to 
revive  some  of  the  syllables,  which  have  already 
dropped  out  or  got  transposed.  Ebbinghaus  now 
systematically  studied  the  number  of  readings- 
over  which  were  necessary  to  revive  the  unhesi- 
tating recollection  of  the  piece  after  five  minutes, 
half  an  hour,  an  hour,  a  day,  a  week,  a  month, 
had  elapsed.  The  number  of  rereadings  requir- 
ed he  took  to  be  a  measure  of  the  amount  of  for- 
getting that  had  occurred  in  the  elapsed  interval. 
And  he  found  some  remarkable  facts.  The  proc- 
ess of  forgetting,  namely,  is  vastly  more  rapid 
at  first  than  later  on.  Thus  full  half  of  the  piece 
seems  to  be  forgotten  within  the  first  half-hour, 
two-thirds  of  it  are  forgotten  at  the  end  of  eight 
hours,  but  only  four-fifths  at  the  end  of  a  month. 
He  made  no  trials  beyond  one  month  of  interval ; 
but,  if  we  ourselves  prolong  ideally  the  curve  of 
remembrance,  whose  beginning  his  experiments 


THE   RATE  OF   FORGETTING  141 

thus  obtain,  it  is  natural  to  suppose  that,  no 
matter  how  long  a  time  might  elapse,  the  curve 
would  never  descend  quite  so  low  as  to  touch  the 
zero-line.  In  other  words,  no  matter  how  long 
ago  we  may  have  learned  a  poem,  and  no  matter 
how  complete  our  inability  to  reproduce  it  now 
may  be,  yet  the  first  learning  will  still  show  its 
lingering  effects  in  the  abridgment  of  the  time 
required  for  learning  it  again.  In  short,  Pro- 
fessor Ebbinghaus's  experiments  show  that  things 
which  we  are  quite  unable  definitely  to  recall  have 
nevertheless  impressed  themselves,  in  some  way, 
upon  the  structure  of  the  mind.  We  are  different 
for  having  once  learned  them.  The  resistances 
in  our  systems  of  brain-paths  are  altered.  Our  ap- 
prehensions are  quickened.  Our  conclusions  from 
certain  premises  are  probably  not  just  what  they 
would  be  if  those  modifications  were  not  there. 
The  latter  influence  the  whole  margin  of  our  con- 
sciousness, even  though  their  products,  not  being 
distinctly  reproducible,  do  not  directly  figure  at 
the  focus  of  the  field. 

The  teacher  should  draw  a  lesson  from  these 
facts.  We  are  all  too  apt  to  measure  the  gains  of 
our  pupils  by  their  proficiency  in  directly  repro- 
ducing in  a  recitation  or  an  examination  such 


142  TALKS  TO   TEACHERS 

matters  as  they  may  have  learned,  and  inarticu- 
late power  in  them  is  something  of  which  we 
always  underestimate  the  value.  The  boy  who 
tells  us,  "  I  know  the  answer,  but  I  can't  say  what 
it  is,"  we  treat  as  practically  identical  with  him 
who  knows  absolutely  nothing  about  the  answer 
at  all.  But  this  is  a  great  mistake.  It  is  but  a 
small  part  of  our  experience  in  life  that  we  are 
ever  able  articulately  to  recall.  And  yet  the 
whole  of  it  has  had  its  influence  in  shaping  our 
character  and  defining  our  tendencies  to  judge 
and  act.  Although  the  ready  memory  is  a  great 
blessing  to  its  possessor,  the  vaguer  memory  of  a 
subject,  of  naving  once  had  to  do  with  it,  of  its 
neighborhood,  and  of  where  we  may  go  to  recover 
it  again,  constitutes  in  most  men  and  women  the 
chief  fruit  of  their  education.  This  is  true  even 
in  professional  education.  The  doctor,  the  lawyer, 
are  seldom  able  to  decide  upon  a  case  off-hand. 
They  differ  from  other  men  only  through  the  fact 
that  they  know  how  to  get  at  the  materials  for 
decision  in  five  minutes  or  half  an  hour :  whereas 
the  layman  is  unable  to  get  at  the  materials  at  all, 
not  knowing  in  what  books  and  indexes  to  look 
or  not  understanding  the  technical  terms. 

Be  patient,  then,  and  sympathetic  with  the  type 


THE   FORGOTTEN  MAY   STILL   COUNT        143 

of  mind  that  cuts  a  poor  figure  in  examinations. 
It  may,  in  the  long  examination  which  life  sets 
us,  come  out  in  the  end  in  better  shape  than 
the  glib  and  ready  reproducer,  its  passions  being 
deeper,  its  purposes  more  worthy,  its  combining 
power  less  commonplace,  and  its  total  mental 
output  consequently  more  important. 

Such  are  the  chief  points  which  it  has  seemed 
worth  while  for  me  to  call  to  your  notice  under 
the  head  of  memory.  We  can  sum  them  up  for 
practical  purposes  by  saying  that  the  art  of  re- 
membering is  the  art  of  thinking  ;  and  by  adding, 
with  Dr.  Pick,  that,  when  we  wish,  to  fix  a  new 
thing  in  either  our  own  mind  or  a  pupil's,  our 
conscious  effort  should  not  be  so  much  to  im- 
press and  retain  it  as  to  connect  it  with  some- 
thing else  already  there.  The  connecting  is  the 
thinking;  and,  if  we  attend  clearly  to  the  con- 
nection, the  connected  thing  will  certainly  be 
likely  to  remain  within  recall. 

I  shall  next  aak  you  to  consider  the  process  by 
which  we  acquire  new  knowledge, —  the  process  of 
'  Apperception,'  as  it  is  called,  by  which  we  re- 
ceive and  deal  with  new  experiences,  and  revise 
our  stock  of  ideas  so  as  to  form  new  or  improved 
conceptions. 


XIII. 


THE  images  of  our  past  experiences,  of  what- 
ever nature  they  may  be,  visual  or  verbal,  blurred 
and  dim,  vivid  and  distinct,  abstract  or  concrete, 
need  not  be  memory  images,  in  the  strict  sense  of 
the  word.  That  is,  they  need  not  rise  before  the 
mind  in  a  marginal  fringe  or  context  of  concomi- 
tant circumstances,  which  mean  for  us  their  date. 
They  may  be  mere  conceptions,  floating  pictures 
of  an  object,  or  of  its  type  or  class.  In  this  un- 
dated condition,  we  call  them  products  of  'im- 
agination '  or  '  conception.'  Imagination  is  the 
term  commonly  used  where  the  object  represent- 
ed is  thought  of  as  an  individual  thing.  Concep- 
tion is  the  term  where  we  think  of  it  as  a  type  or 
class.  For  our  present  purpose  the  distinction 
is  not  important ;  and  I  will  permit  myself  to  use 
either  the  word  'conception,'  or  the  still  vaguer 
word  '  idea,'  to  designate  the  inner  objects  of  con- 
templation, whether  these  be  individual  things, 
like  '  the  sun '  or  '  Julius  Csesar,'  or  classes  of 


THE   STOCK   OF   IDEAS  145 

things,  like  'animal  kingdom,'  or,  finally,  entirely 
abstract  attributes,  like  'rationality'  or  'rect- 
itude.' 

The  result  of  our  education  is  to  fill  the  mind 
little  by  little,  as  experiences  accrete,  with  a  stock 
of  such  ideas.  In  the  illustration  I  used  at  our 
first  meeting,  of  the  child  snatching  the  toy  and 
getting  slapped,  the  vestiges  left  by  the  first  experi- 
ence answered  to  so  many  ideas  which  he  acquired 
thereby, —  ideas  that  remained  with  him  associ- 
ated in  a  certain  order,  and  from  the  last  one  of 
which  the  child  eventually  proceeded  to  act.  The 
sciences  of  grammar  and  of  logic  are  little  more 
than  attempts  methodically  to  classify  all  such 
acquired  ideas  and  to  trace  certain  laws  of  relation- 
ship among  them.  The  forms  of  relation  between 
them,  becoming  themselves  in  turn  noticed  by  the 
mind,  are  treated  as  conceptions  of  a  higher  and 
more  abstract  order,  as  when  we  speak  of  a  '  syl- 
logistic relation  '  between  propositions,  or  of  four 
quantities  making  a  '  proportion,'  or  of  the  '  incon- 
sistency '  of  two  conceptions,  or  the  '  implication  ' 
of  one  in  the  other. 

So  you  see  that  the  process  of  education,  taken 
in  a  large  way,  may  be  described  as  nothing  but 
the  process  of  acquiring  ideas  or  conceptions, 


146  TALKS   TO   TEACHERS 

the  best  educated  mind  being  the  mind  which 
has  the  largest  stock  of  them,  ready  to  meet  the 
largest  possible  variety  of  the  emergencies  of  life. 
The  lack  of  education  means  only  the  failure  to 
have  acquired  them,  and  the  consequent  liability 
to  be  '  floored '  and  '  rattled '  in  the  vicissitudes 
of  experience. 

In  all  this  process  of  acquiring  conceptions,  a 
certain  instinctive  order  is  followed.  There  is  a 
native  tendency  to  assimilate  certain  kinds  of  con- 
ception at  one  age,  and  other  kinds  of  conception 
at  a  later  age.  During  the  first  seven  or  eight 
years  of  childhood  the  mind  is  most  interested 
in  the  sensible  properties  of  material  things. 
Construct™ eness  is  the  instinct  most  active ;  and 
by  the  incessant  hammering  and  sawing,  and 
dressing  and  undressing  dolls,  putting  of  things 
together  and  taking  them  apart,  the  child  not 
only  trains  the  muscles  to  co-ordinate  action,  but 
accumulates  a  store  of  physical  conceptions  which 
are  the  basis  of  his  knowledge  of  the  material 
world  through  life.  Object-teaching  and  manual 
training  wisely  extend  the  sphere  of  this  order 
of  acquisition.  Clay,  wood,  metals,  and  the  vari- 
ous kinds  of  tools  are  made  to  contribute  to  the 
store.  A  youth  brought  up  with  a  sufficiently 


IDEAS   OF  PHYSICAL   THINGS  147 

broad  basis  of  this  kind  is  always  at  home  in  the 
world.  He  stands  within  the  pale.  He  is  ac- 
quainted with  Nature,  and  Nature  in  a  certain 
sense  is  acquainted  with  him.  Whereas  the 
youth  brought  up  alone  at  home,  with  no  ac- 
quaintance with  anything  but  the  printed  page, 
is  always  afflicted  with  a  certain  remoteness  from 
the  material  facts  of  life,  and  a  correlative  inse- 
curity of  consciousness  which  make  of  him  a  kind 
of  alien  on  the  earth  in  which  he  ought  to  feel 
himself  perfectly  at  home. 

I  already  said  something  of  this  in  speaking 
of  the  constructive  impulse,  and  I  must  not  re- 
peat myself.  Moreover,  you  fully  realize,  I  am 
sure,  how  important  for  life, —  for  the  moral 
tone  of  life,  quite  apart  from  definite  practical  pur- 
suits,— is  this  sense  of  readiness  for  emergencies 
which  a  man  gains  through  early  familiarity  and 
acquaintance  with  the  world  of  material  things. 
To  have  grown  up  on  a  farm,  to  have  haunted 
a  carpenter's  and  blacksmith's  shop,  to  have 
handled  horses  and  cows  and  boats  and  guns,  and 
to  have  ideas  and  abilities  connected  with  such 
objects  are  an  inestimable  part  of  youthful  ac- 
quisition. After  adolescence  it  is  rare  to  be  able 
to  get  into  familiar  touch  with  any  of  these 


148  TALKS   TO   TEACHERS 

primitive  things.  The  instinctive  propensions 
have  faded,  and  the  habits  are  hard  to  acquire. 

Accordingly,  one  of  the  best  fruits  of  the  '  child- 
study  '  movement  has  been  to  reinstate  all  these 
activities  to  their  proper  place  in  a  sound  system 
of  education.  Feed  the  growing  human  being, 
feed  him  with  the  sort  of  experience  for  which  from 
year  to  year  he  shows  a  natural  craving,  and  he 
will  develop  in  adult  life  a  sounder  sort  of  mental 
tissue,  even  though  he  may  seem  to  be  '  wasting ' 
a  great  deal  of  his  growing  time,  in  the  eyes  of 
those  for  whom  the  only  channels  of  learning  are 
books  and  verbally  communicated  information. 

It  is  not  till  adolescence  is  reached  that  the 
mind  grows  able  to  take  in  the  more  abstract  as- 
pects of  experience,  the  hidden  similarities  and 
distinctions  between  things,  and  especially  their 
causal  sequences.  Rational  knowledge  of  such 
things  as  mathematics,  mechanics,  chemistry,  and 
biology,  is  now  possible  :  and  the  acquisition  of 
conceptions  of  this  order  form  the  next  phase  of 
education.  Later  still,  not  till  adolescence  is  well 
advanced,  does  the  mind  awaken  to  a  systematic 
interest  in  abstract  human  relations  —  moral  rela- 
tions, properly  so  called, —  to  sociological  ideas 
and  to  metaphysical  abstractions. 


NATT7BAL  ORDEB  OP  ACQUISITION         149 

This  general  order  of  sequence  is  followed  tra- 
ditionally of  course  in  the  schoolroom.  It  is  for- 
eign to  my  purpose  to  do  more  than  indicate  that 
general  psychological  principle  of  the  successive 
order  of  awakening  of  the  faculties  on  which  the 
whole  thing  rests.  I  have  spoken  of  it  already, 
apropos  of  the  transitoriness  of  instincts.  Just  as 
many  a  youth  has  to  go  permanently  without  an 
adequate  stock  of  conceptions  of  a  certain  order, 
because  experiences  of  that  order  were  not  yielded 
at  the  time  when  new  curiosity  was  most  acute, 
so  it  will  conversely  happen  that  many  another 
youth  is  spoiled  for  a  certain  subject  of  study 
(although  he  would  have  enjoyed  it  well  if  led 
into  it  at  a  later  age)  through  having  had  it 
thrust  upon  him  so  prematurely  that  disgust  was 
created,  and  the  bloom  quite  taken  off  from  fut- 
ure trials.  I  think  I  have  seen  college  students 
unfitted  forever  for  'philosophy'  from  having 
taken  that  study  up  a  year  too  soon. 

In  all  these  later  studies,  verbal  material  is  the 
vehicle  by  which  the  mind  thinks.  The  abstract 
conceptions  of  physics  and  sociology  may,  it  is 
true,  be  embodied  in  visual  or  other  images  of 
phenomena,  but  they  need  not  be  so;  and  the 
truth  remains  that,  after  adolescence  has  begun, 


150  TALKS   TO   TEACHERS 

"words,  words,  words,"  must  constitute  a  large 
part,  and  an  always  larger  part  as  life  advances, 
of  what  the  human  being  has  to  learn.  This  is 
so  even  in  the  natural  sciences,  so  far  as  these  are 
causal  and  rational,  and  not  merely  confined  to 
description.  So  I  go  back  to  what  I  said  awhile 
ago  apropos  of  verbal  memorizing.  The  more  ac- 
curately words  are  learned,  the  better,  if  only  the 
teacher  make  sure  that  what  they  signify  is  also 
understood.  It  is  the  failure  of  this  latter  condi- 
tion, in  so  much  of  the  old-fashioned  recitation, 
that  has  caused  that  reaction  against  '  parrot-like 
reproduction '  that  we  are  so  familiar  with  to-day. 
A  friend  of  mine,  visiting  a  school,  was  asked  to 
examine  a  young  class  in  geography.  Glancing 
at  the  book,  she  said :  "  Suppose  you  should  dig  a 
hole  in  the  ground,  hundreds  of  feet  deep,  how 
should  you  find  it  at  the  bottom, —  warmer  or 
colder  than  on  top  ?  "  None  of  the  class  replying, 
the  teacher  said :  "  I'm  sure  they  know,  but  I  think 
you  don't  ask  the  question  quite  rightly.  Let  me 
try."  So,  taking  the  book,  she  asked:  "In  what 
condition  is  the  interior  of  the  globe?"  and  re- 
ceived the  immediate  answer  from  half  the  class  at 
once  :  "  The  interior  of  the  globe  is  in  a  condition 
of  igneous  fusion ."  Better  exclusive  object-teach- 


EACH  AGE  CAN  APPREHEND  ABSTBACTIONS   151 

ing  than  such  verbal  recitations  as  that ;  and  yet 
verbal  reproduction,  intelligently  connected  with 
more  objective  work,  must  always  play  a  leading, 
and  surely  the  leading,  part  in  education.  Our 
modern  reformers,  in  their  books,  write  too  ex- 
clusively of  the  earliest  years  of  the  pupil.  These 
lend  themselves  better  to  explicit  treatment ;  and 
I  myself,  in  dwelling  BO  much  upon  the  native 
impulses,  and  object-teaching,  and  anecdotes,  and 
all  that,  have  paid  my  tribute  to  the  line  of 
least  resistance  in  describing.  Yet  away  back  in 
childhood  we  find  the  beginnings  of  purely  intel- 
lectual curiosity,  and  the  intelligence  of  abstract 
terms.  The  object-teaching  is  mainly  to  launch 
the  pupils,  with  some  concrete  conceptions  of  the 
facts  concerned,  upon  the  more  abstract  ideas. 

To  hear  some  authorities  on  teaching,  however, 
you  would  suppose  that  geography  not  only  began, 
but  ended  with  the  school-yard  and  neighboring 
hill,  that  physics  was  one  endless  round  of  repeat- 
ing the  same  sort  of  tedious  weighing  and  meas- 
uring operation:  whereas  a  very  few  examples 
are  usually  sufficient  to  set  the  imagination  free 
on  genuine  lines,  and  then  what  the  mind  craves 
is  more  rapid,  general,  and  abstract  treatment.  I 
heard  a  lady  say  that  she  had  taken  her  child  to 


152  TALKS  TO  TEACHERS 

the  kindergarten,  "but  he  is  so  bright  that  he 
saw  through  it  immediately."  Too  many  school 
children  '  see '  as  immediately  *  through '  the 
namby-pamby  attempts  of  the  softer  pedagogy 
to  lubricate  things  for  them,  and  make  them  in- 
teresting. Even  they  can  enjoy  abstractions,  pro- 
vided they  be  of  the  proper  order ;  and  it  is  a  poor 
compliment  to  their  rational  appetite  to  think  that 
anecdotes  about  little  Tommies  and  little  Jennies 
are  the  only  kind  of  things  their  minds  can  digest. 
But  here,  as  elsewhere,  it  is  a  matter  of  more 
or  less ;  and,  in  the  last  resort,  the  teacher's  own 
tact  is  the  only  thing  that  can  bring  out  the  right 
effect.  The  great  difficulty  with  abstractions  is 
that  of  knowing  just  what  meaning  the  pupil  at- 
taches to  the  terms  he  uses.  The  words  may 
sound  all  right,  but  the  meaning  remains  the 
child's  own  secret.  So  varied  forms  of  words 
must  be  insisted  on,  to  bring  the  secret  out.  And 
a  strange  secret  does  it  often  prove.  A  relative 
of  mine  was  trying  to  explain  to  a  little  girl  what 
was  meant  by  *  the  passive  voice ' :  "  Suppose 
that  you  kill  me :  you  who  do  the  killing  are  in 
the  active  voice,  and  I,  who  am  killed,  am  in 
the  passive  voice."  "But  how  can  you  speak 
if  you're  killed?"  said  the  child.  "Oh,  well, 


AMBIGUITY   OF   VEEBAL   ABSTRACTIONS      153 

you  may  suppose  that  I  am  not  yet  quite  dead ! " 
The  next  day  the  child  was  asked,  in  class,  to  ex- 
plain the  passive  voice,  and  said,  "  It's  the  kind  of 
voice  you  speak  with  when  you  ain't  quite  dead." 
In  such  a  case  as  this  the  illustration  ought  to 
have  been  more  varied.  Every  one's  memory  will 
probably  furnish  examples  of  the  fantastic  mean- 
ing which  their  childhood  attached  to  certain 
verbal  statements  (in  poetry  often),  and  which 
their  elders,  not  having  any  reason  to  suspect, 
never  corrected.  I  remember  being  greatly  moved 
emotionally  at  the  age  of  eight  by  the  ballad  of 
Lord  Ullin's  Daughter.  Yet  I  thought  that  the 
staining  of  the  heather  by  the  blood  was  the  evil 
chiefly  dreaded,  and  that,  when  the  boatman  said, 

"  I'll  row  you  o'er  the  ferry. 
It  is  not  for  your  silver  bright, 
But  for  your  winsome  lady," 

he  was  to  receive  the  lady  for  his  pay.  Similarly, 
I  recently  found  that  one  of  my  own  children  was 
reading  (and  accepting)  a  verse  of  Tennyson's 
In  Memoriam  as 

"Ring  out  the/oorf  of  rich  and  poor, 
King  in  redness  to  all  mankind," 

and  finding  no  inward  difficulty. 


154  TALKS   TO   TEACHERS 

The  only  safeguard  against  this  sort  of  miscon- 
ceiving is  to  insist  on  varied  statement,  and  to 
bring  the  child's  conceptions,  wherever  it  be  pos- 
sible, to  some  sort  of  practical  test. 

Let  us  next  pass  to  the  subject  of  Appercep- 
tion. 


XIV. 

APPERCEPTION 

'  APPERCEPTION  '  is  a  word  which  cuts  a  great 
figure  in  the  pedagogics  of  the  present  day. 
Read,  for  example,  this  advertisement  of  a  certain 
text-book,  which  I  take  from  an  educational 
journal :  — 

WHAT  IS  APPERCEPTION? 

For  an  explanation  of  Apperception  see 

Blank's  PSYCHOLOGY,  Vol. of  the 

Education  Series,  just  published. 

The  difference  between  Perception  and 
Apperception  is  explained  for  the  teacher  in 
the  preface  to  Blank's  PSYCHOLOGY. 

Many  teachers  are  inquiring,  "What  IB 
the  meaning  of  Apperception  in  educational 
psychology?"  Just  the  book  for  them  is 
Blank's  PSYCHOLOGY,  in  which  the  idea 
was  first  expounded 

The  most  important  idea  in  educational 
psychology  is  Apperception.  The  teacher 
may  find  this  'expounded  in  Blank's  PSY- 
CHOLOGY. The  idea  of  Apperception  is 
making  a  revolution  in  educational  methods 
in  Germany.  It  is  explained  in  Blank's 

PSYCHOLOGY,  Vol. of  the 

Education  Series,  just  published. 

Blank's  PSYCHOLOGY  will  be  mailed 
prepaid  to  any  address  on  receipt  of  $1.00. 


156  TALKS   TO   TEACHERS 

Such  an  advertisement  is  in  sober  earnest  a 
disgrace  to  all  concerned;  and  such  talk  as  it 
indulges-in  is  the  sort  of  thing  I  had  in  view 
when  I  said  at  our  first  meeting  that  the  teachers 
were  suffering  at  the  present  day  from  a  certain 
industrious  mystification  on  the  part  of  editors 
and  publishers.  Perhaps  the  word  'appercep- 
tion,' flourished  in  their  eyes  and  ears  as  it 
nowadays  often  is,  embodies  as  much  of  this 
mystification  as  any  other  single  thing.  The 
conscientious  young  teacher  is  led  to  believe  that 
it  contains  a  recondite  and  portentous  secret,  by 
losing  the  true  inwardness  of  which  her  whole 
career  may  be  shattered.  And  yet,  when  she 
turns  to  the  books  and  reads  about  it,  it  seems 
so  trivial  and  commonplace  a  matter, —  meaning 
nothing  more  than  the  manner  in  which  we  re- 
ceive a  thing  into  our  minds, —  that  she  fears  she 
must  have  missed  the  point  through  the  shallow- 
ness  of  her  intelligence,  and  goes  about  thereafter 
afflicted  with  a  sense  either  of  uncertainty  or  of 
stupidity,  and  in  each  case  remaining  mortified 
at  being  so  inadequate  to  her  mission. 

Now  apperception  is  an  extremely  useful  word 
in  pedagogics,  and  offers  a  convenient  name  for  a 
process  to  which  every  teacher  must  frequently 


APPERCEPTION   DEFINED  157 

refer.  But  it  verily  means  nothing  more  than  the 
act  of  taking  a  thing  into  the  mind.  It  corre- 
sponds to  nothing  peculiar  or  elementary  in  psy- 
chology, being  only  one  of  the  innumerable  re- 
sults of  the  psychological  process  of  association  of 
ideas;  and  psychology  itself  can  easily  dispense 
with  the  word,  useful  as  it  may  be  in  pedagogics. 

The  gist  of  the  matter  is  this :  Every  impression 
that  comes  in  from  without,  be  it  a  sentence  which 
we  hear,  an  object  of  vision,  or  an  effluvium  which 
assails  our  nose,  no  sooner  enters  our  conscious- 
ness than  it  is  drafted  off  in  some  determinate  direc- 
tion or  other,  making  connection  with  the  other 
materials  already  there,  and  finally  producing  what 
we  call  our  reaction.  The  particular  connections 
it  strikes  into  are  determined  by  our  past  experi- 
ences and  the  4  associations '  of  the  present  sort 
of  impression  with  them.  If,  for  instance,  you 
hear  me  call  out  A,  B,  C,  it  is  ten  to  one  that  you 
will  react  on  the  impression  by  inwardly  or  out- 
wardly articulating  D,  E,  F.  The  impression 
arouses  its  old  associates ;  they  go  out  to  meet  it ; 
it  is  received  by  them,  recognized  by  the  mind  as 
'  the  beginning  of  the  alphabet.'  It  is  the  fate  of 
every  impression  thus  to  fall  into  a  mind  pre- 


158  TALKS   TO   TEACHERS 

occupied  with  memories,  ideas,  and  interests,  and 
by  these  it  is  taken  in.  Educated  as  we  already 
are,  we  never  get  an  experience  that  remains  for 
us  completely  nondescript:  it  always  reminds  of 
something  similar  in  quality,  or  of  some  context 
that  might  have  surrounded  it  before,  and  which 
it  now  in  some  way  suggests.  This  mental  escort 
which  the  mind  supplies  is  drawn,  of  course, 
from  the  mind's  ready-made  stock.  We  conceive 
the  impression  in  some  definite  way.  We  dispose 
of  it  according  to  our  acquired  possibilities,  be 
they  few  or  many,  in  the  way  of  'ideas.'  This 
way  of  taking  in  the  object  is  the  process  of  ap- 
perception. The  conceptions  which  meet  and 
assimilate  it  are  called  by  Herbart  the  '  apperceiv- 
ing  mass.'  The  apperceived  impression  is  en- 
gulfed in  this,  and  the  result  is  a  new  field  of 
consciousness,  of  which  one  part  (and  often  a  very 
small  part)  comes  from  the  outer  world,  and 
another  part  (sometimes  by  far  the  largest)  comes 
from  the  previous  contents  of  the  mind. 

I  think  that  you  see  plainly  enough  now  that 
the  process  of  apperception  is  what  I  called  it  a 
moment  ago,  a  resultant  of  the  association  of 
ideas.  The  product  is  a  sort  of  fusion  of  the  new 
with  the  old,  in  which  it  is  often  impossible  to 


THE   LAW   OF   LEAST   DISTURBANCE         159 

distinguish  the  share  of  the  two  factors.  For 
example,  when  we  listen  to  a  person  speaking  or 
read  a  page  of  print,  much  of  what  we  think  we 
see  or  hear  is  supplied  from  our  memory.  We 
overlook  misprints,  imagining  the  right  letters, 
though  we  see  the  wrong  ones ;  and  how  little  we 
actually  hear,  when  we  listen  to  speech,  we  realize 
when  we  go  to  a  foreign  theatre  ;  for  there  what 
troubles  us  is  not  so  much  that  we  cannot  under- 
stand what  the  actors  say  as  that  we  cannot  hear 
their  words.  The  fact  is  that  we  hear  quite  as 
little  under  similar  conditions  at  home,  only  our 
mind,  being  fuller  of  English  verbal  associations, 
supplies  the  requisite  material  for  comprehension 
upon  a  much  slighter  auditory  hint. 

In  all  the  apperceptive  operations  of  the  mind, 
a  certain  general  law  makes  itself  felt, —  the  law 
of  economy.  In  admitting  a  new  body  of  expe- 
rience, we  instinctively  seek  to  disturb  as  little 
as  possible  our  pre-existing  stock  of  ideas.  We 
always  try  to  name  a  new  experience  in  some 
way  which  will  assimilate  it  to  what  we  already 
know.  We  hate  anything  absolutely  new,  any- 
thing without  any  name,  and  for  which  a  new 
name  must  be  forged.  So  we  take  the  nearest 
name,  even  though  it  be  inappropriate.  A  child 


160  TALKS   TO   TEACHERS 

will  call  snow,  when  he  sees  it  for  the  first  time, 
sugar  or  white  butterflies.  The  sail  of  a  boat  he 
calls  a  curtain ;  an  egg  in  its  shell,  seen  for  the 
first  time,  he  calls  a  pretty  potato ;  an  orange,  a 
ball ;  a  folding  corkscrew,  a  pair  of  bad  scissors. 
Caspar  Hauser  called  the  first  geese  he  saw 
horses,  and  the  Polynesians  called  Captain  Cook's 
horses  pigs.  Mr.  Hooper  has  written  a  little  book 
on  apperception,  to  which  he  gives  the  title  of 
"  A  Pot  of  Green  Feathers,"  that  being  the  name 
applied  to  a  pot  of  ferns  by  a  child  who  had  never 
seen  ferns  before. 

In  later  life  this  economical  tendency  to  leave 
the  old  undisturbed  leads  to  what  we  know  as 
'old  fogyism.'  A  new  idea  or  a  fact  which 
would  entail  extensive  rearrangement  of  the  pre- 
vious system  of  beliefs  is  always  ignored  or  ex- 
truded from  the  mind  in  case  it  cannot  be  sophis- 
tically  reinterpreted  so  as  to  tally  harmoniously 
with  the  system.  We  have  all  conducted  discus- 
sions with  middle-aged  people,  overpowered  them 
with  our  reasons,  forced  them  to  admit  our  con- 
tention, and  a  week  later  found  them  back  as 
secure  and  constant  in  their  old  opinion  as  if  they 
had  never  conversed  with  us  at  all.  We  call  them 
old  fogies ;  but  there  are  young  fogies,  too.  Old 


NUMBERLESS   TYPES   OF  APPERCEPTION       161 

fogyism  begins  at  a  younger  age  than  we  think. 
I  am  almost  afraid  to  say  so,  but  I  believe  that 
in  the  majority  of  human  beings  it  begins  at 
about  twenty-five. 

In  some  of  the  books  we  find  the  various  forms 
of  apperception  codified,  and  their  subdivisions 
numbered  and  ticketed  in  tabular  form  in  the  way 
so  delightful  to  the  pedagogic  eye.  In  one  book 
which  I  remember  reading  •  there  were  sixteen  dif- 
ferent types  of  apperception  discriminated  from 
each  other.  There  was  associative  apperception, 
subsumptive  apperception,  assimilative  appercep- 
tion, and  others  up  to  sixteen.  It  is  needless  to 
say  that  this  is  nothing  but  an  exhibition  of  the 
crass  artificiality  which  has  always  haunted  psy- 
chology, and  which  perpetuates  itself  by  lingering 
along,  especially  in  these  works  which  are  adver- 
tised as  'written  for  the  use  of  teachers.'  The 
flowing  life  of  the  mind  is  sorted  into  parcels 
suitable  for  presentation  in  the  recitation-room, 
and  chopped  up  into  supposed  'processes'  with 
long  Greek  and  Latin  names,  which  in  real  life 
have  no  distinct  existence. 

There  is  no  reason,  if  we  are  classing  the  dif- 
ferent types  of  apperception,  why  we  should  stop 
at  sixteen  rather  than  sixteen  hundred.  There 


162  TALKS   TO   TEACHERS 

are  as  many  types  of  apperception  as  there  are  pos- 
sible ways  in  which  an  incoming  experience  may 
be  reacted  on  by  an  individual  mind.  A  little 
while  ago,  at  Buffalo,  I  was  the  guest  of  a  lady 
who,  a  fortnight  before,  had  taken  her  seven-year 
old  boy  for  the  first  time  to  Niagara  Falls.  The 
child  silently  glared  at  the  phenomenon  until  his 
mother,  supposing  him  struck  speechless  by  its 
sublimity,  said,  "Well,  my  boy,  what  do  you 
think  of  it?"  to  which,  "Is  that  the  kind  of 
spray  I  spray  my  nose  with  ?  "  was  the  boy's  only 
reply.  That  was  his  mode  of  apperceiving  the 
spectacle.  You  may  claim  this  as  a  particular 
type,  and  call  it  by  the  greek  name  of  rhinothera- 
peutical  apperception,  if  you  like ;  and,  if  you  do, 
you  will  hardly  be  more  trivial  or  artificial  than 
are  some  of  the  authors  of  the  books. 

M.  Perez,  in  one  of  his  books  on  childhood,  gives 
a  good  example  of  the  different  modes  of  apper- 
ception of  the  same  phenomenon  which  are  pos- 
sible at  different  stages  of  individual  experience. 
A  dwelling-house  took  fire,  and  an  infant  in  the 
family,  witnessing  the  conflagration  from  the 
arms  of  his  nurse,  standing  outside,  expressed 
nothing  but  the  liveliest  delight  at  its  brilliancy. 
But,  when  the  bell  of  the  fire-engine  was  heard 


TOO  FEW  HEADS  OP  CLASSIETCATION      163 

approaching,  the  child  was  thrown  by  the  sound 
into  a  paroxysm  of  fear,  strange  sounds  being,  as 
you  know,  very  alarming  to  young  children.  In 
what  opposite  ways  must  the  child's  parents  have 
apperceived  the  burning  house  and  the  engine  re- 
spectively ! 

The  self-same  person,  according  to  the  line  of 
thought  he  may  be  in  or  to  his  emotional  mood, 
will  apperceive  the  same  impression  quite  dif- 
ferently on  different  occasions.  A  medical  or  en- 
gineering expert  retained  on  one  side  of  a  case 
will  not  apperceive  the  foots  in  the  same  way  as 
if  the  other  side  had  retained  him,.  When  people 
are  at  loggerheads  about  the  interpretation  of  a 
fact,  it  usually  shows  that  they  have  too  few  heads 
of  classification  to  apperceive  by;  for,  as  a  gen- 
eral thing,  the  fact  of  such  a  dispute  is  enough 
to  show  that  neither  one  of  their  rival  interpreta- 
tions is  a  perfect  fit.  Both  sides  deal  with  the 
matter  by  approximation,  squeezing  it  under  the 
handiest  or  least  disturbing  conception :  whereas 
it  would,  nine  times  out  of  ten,  be  better  to  en- 
large their  stock  of  ideas  or  invent  some  altogether 
new  title  for  the  phenomenon. 

Thus,  in  biology,  we  used  to  have  interminable 
discussion  as  to  whether  certain  single-celled  or- 


164  TALKS   TO   TEACHEES 

ganisms  were  animals  or  vegetables,  until  Haeckel 
introduced  the  new  apperceptive  name  of  Protista, 
which  ended  the  disputes.  In  law  courts  no 
tertium  quid  is  recognized  between  insanity  and 
sanity.  If  sane,  a  man  is  punished:  if  insane, 
acquitted;  and  it  is  seldom  hard  to  find  two 
experts  who  will  take  opposite  views  of  his 
case.  All  the  while,  nature  is  more  subtle  than 
our  doctors.  Just  as  a  room  is  neither  dark  nor 
light  absolutely,  but  might  be  dark  for  a  watch- 
maker's uses,  and  yet  light  enough  to  eat  in  or 
play  in,  so  a  man  may  be  sane  for  some  purposes 
and  insane  for  others, —  sane  enough  to  be  left  at 
large,  yet  not  sane  enough  to  take  care  of  his 
financial  affairs.  The  word  'crank,'  which  be- 
came familiar  at  the  time  of  Guiteau's  trial,  ful- 
filled the  need  of  a  tertium  quid.  The  foreign 
terms  ' de"se"quilibreY  'hereditary  degenerate,'  and 
'psychopathic'  subject,  have  arisen  in  response 
to  the  same  need. 

The  whole  progress  of  our  sciences  goes  on  by 
the  invention  of  newly  forged  technical  names 
whereby  to  designate  the  newly  remarked  aspects 
of  phenomena, —  phenomena  which  could  only  be 
squeezed  with  violence  into  the  pigeonholes  of 
the  earlier  stock  of  conceptions.  As  time  goes 


THE  APPEBCEIVING  IDEA 

on,  our  vocabulary  becomes  thus  ever  more  and 
more  voluminous,  having  to  keep  up  with  the 
ever-growing  multitude  of  our  stock  of  apperceiv- 
ing  ideas. 

In  this  gradual  process  of  interaction  between 
the  new  and  the  old,  not  only  is  the  new  modified 
and  determined  by  the  particular  sort  of  old 
which  apperceives  it,  but  the  apperceiving  mass, 
the  old  itself,  is  modified  by  the  particular  kind 
of  new  which  it  assimilates.  Thus,  to  take  the 
stock  German  example  of  the  child  brought  up  in 
a  house  where  there  are  no  tables  but  square  ones, 
'table'  means  for  him  a  thing  in  which  square 
corners  are  essential.  But,  if  he  goes  to  a  house 
where  there  are  round  tables  and  still  calls  them 
tables,  his  apperceiving  notion  '  table '  acquires 
immediately  a  wider  inward  content.  In  this 
way,  our  conceptions  are  constantly  dropping 
characters  once  supposed  essential,  and  including 
others  once  supposed  inadmissible.  The  exten- 
sion of  the  notion  4  beast '  to  porpoises  and  whales, 
of  the  notion  '  organism '  to  society,  are  familiar 
examples  of  what  I  mean. 

But  be  our  conceptions  adequate  or  inadequate, 
and  be  our  stock  of  them  large  or  small,  they  are 
all  we  have  to  work  with.  If  an  educated  man  is, 


166  TALKS   TO   TEACHERS 

as  I  said,  a  group  of  organized  tendencies  to  con- 
duct, what  prompts  the  conduct  is  in  every  case 
the  man's  conception  of  the  way  in  which  to  name 
and  classify  the  actual  emergency.  The  more 
adequate  the  stock  of  ideas,  the  more  '  able '  is  the 
man,  the  more  uniformly  appropriate  is  his  be- 
havior likely  to  be.  When  later  we  take  up  the 
subject  of  the  will,  we  shall  see  that  the  essential 
preliminary  to  every  decision  is  the  finding  of  the 
right  names  under  which  to  class  the  proposed 
alternatives  of  conduct.  He  who  has  few  names 
is  in  so  far  forth  an  incompetent  deliberator.  The 
names — and  each  name  stands  for  a  conception 
or  idea  —  are  our  instruments  for  handling  our 
problems  and  solving  our  dilemmas.  Now,  when 
we  think  of  this,  we  are  too  apt  to  forget  an  im- 
portant fact,  which  is  that  in  most  human  beings 
the  stock  of  names  and  concepts  is  mostly  ac- 
quired during  the  years  of  adolescence  and  the 
earliest  years  of  adult  life,  I  probably  shocked 
you  a  moment  ago  by  saying  that  most  men  begin 
to  be  old  fogies  at  the  age  of  twenty-five.  It  is 
true  that  a  grown-up  adult  keeps  gaining  well 
into  middle  age  a  great  knowledge  of  details,  and 
a  great  acquaintance  with  individual  cases  con- 
nected with  his  profession  or  business  life.  In 


OLD   FOGY1SM   SETS   IN  EAELY 

this  sense,  his  conceptions  increase  during  a  very 
long  period ;  for  his  knowledge  grows  more  exten- 
sive and  minute,  But  the  larger  categories  of 
conception,  the  sorts  of  thing,  and  wider  classes 
of  relation  between  things,  of  which  we  take  cog- 
nizance, are  all  got  into  the  mind  at  a  compara- 
tively youthful  date.  Few  men  ever  do  acquaint 
themselves  with  the  principles  of  a  new  science 
after  even  twenty-five.  If  you  do  not  study  politi- 
cal economy  in  college,  it  is  a  thousand  to  one 
that  its  main  conceptions  will  remain  unknown 
to  you  through  life.  Similarly  with  biology, 
similarly  with  electricity.  What  percentage  of 
persons  now  fifty  years  old  have  any  definite 
conception  whatever  of  a  dynamo,  or  how  the 
trolley-cars  are  made  to  run?  Surely,  a  small 
fraction  of  one  per  cent.  But  the  boys  in  colleges 
are  all  acquiring  these  conceptions. 

There  is  a  sense  of  infinite  potentiality  in  us  all, 
when  young,  which  makes  some  of  us  draw  up 
lists  of  books  we  intend  to  read  hereafter,  and 
makes  most  of  us  think  that  we  can  easily  ac- 
quaint ourselves  with  all  sorts  of  things  which 
we  are  now  neglecting  by  studying  them  out 
hereafter  in  the  intervals  of  leisure  of  our  business 
lives.  Such  good  intentions  are  hardly  ever  car- 


168  TALKS  TO   TEACHERS 

ried  out.  The  conceptions  acquired  before  thirty 
remain  usually  the  only  ones  we  ever  gain.  Such 
exceptional  cases  of  perpetually  self-renovating 
youth  as  Mr.  Gladstone's  only  prove,  by  the 
admiration  they  awaken,  the  universality  of  the 
rule.  And  it  may  well  solemnize  a  teacher,  and 
confirm  in  him  a  healthy  sense  of  the  importance 
of  his  mission,  to  feel  how  exclusively  dependent 
upon  his  present  ministrations  in  the  way  of  im- 
parting conceptions  the  pupil's  future  life  is  pro- 
bably bound  to  be. 


XV. 

THE  WILL 

SINCE  mentality  terminates  naturally  in  out- 
ward conduct,  the  final  chapter  in  psychology  has 
to  be  the  chapter  on  the  will.  But  the  word 
'  will '  can  be  used  in  a  broader  and  in  a  narrower 
sense.  In  the  broader  sense,  it  designates  our 
entire  capacity  for  impulsive  and  active  life, 
including  our  instinctive  reactions  and  those 
forms  of  behavior  that  have  become  secondarily 
automatic  and  semi-unconscious  through  frequent 
repetition.  In  the  narrower  sense,  acts  of  will  are 
such  acts  only  as  cannot  be  inattentively  per- 
formed. A  distinct  idea  of  what  they  are,  and 
a  deliberate  fat  on  the  mind's  part,  must  precede 
their  execution. 

Such  acts  are  often  characterized  by  hesitation, 
and  accompanied  by  a  feeling,  altogether  peculiar, 
of  resolve,  a  feeling  which  may  or  may  not  carry 
with  it  a  further  feeling  of  effort.  In  my  earlier 
talks,  I  said  so  much  of  our  impulsive  tendencies 
that  I  will  restrict  myself  in  what  follows  to  voli- 
tion in  this  narrower  sense  of  the  term. 


170  TALKB  TO  TEACHEES 

All  our  deeds  were  considered  by  the  early 
psychologists  to  be  due  to  a  peculiar  faculty  called 
the  will,  without  whose  fiat  action  could  not 
occur.  Thoughts  and  impressions,  being  intrinsi- 
cally inactive,  were  supposed  to  produce  conduct 
only  through  the  intermediation  of  this  superior 
agent.  Until  they  twitched  its  coat-tails,  so  to 
speak,  no  outward  behavior  could  occur.  This 
doctrine  was  long  ago  exploded  by  the  discovery 
of  the  phenomena  of  reflex  action,  in  which  sen- 
sible impressions,  as  you  know,  produce  movement 
immediately  and  of  themselves.  The  doctrine 
may  also  be  considered  exploded  as  far  as  ideas 

g°- 

The  fact  is  that  there  is  no  sort  of  consciousness 
whatever,  be  it  sensation,  feeling,  or  idea,  which 
does  not  directly  and  of  itself  tend  to  discharge 
into  some  motor  effect.  The  motor  effect  need 
not  always  be  an  outward  stroke  of  behavior.  It 
may  be  only  an  alteration  of  the  heart-beats  or 
breathing,  or  a  modification  in  the  distribution  of 
blood,  such  as  blushing  or  turning  pale ;  or  else  a 
secretion  of  tears,  or  what  not.  But,  in  any  case, 
it  is  there  in  some  shape  when  any  consciousness 
is  there ;  and  a  belief  as  fundamental  as  any 
in  modern  psychology  is  the  belief  at  last  attained 


IDEOMOTOE  ACTION  171 

that  conscious  processes  of  any  sort,  conscious 
processes  merely  as  such,  must  pass  over  into 
motion,  open  or  concealed. 

The  least  complicated  case  of  this  tendency  is 
the  case  of  a  mind  possessed  by  only  a  single  idea. 
If  that  idea  be  of  an  object  connected  with  a 
native  impulse,  the  impulse  will  immediately  pro- 
ceed to  discharge.  If  it  be  the  idea  of  a  move- 
ment, the  movement  will  occur.  Such  a  case 
of  action  from  a  single  idea  has  been  distinguished 
from  more  complex  cases  by  the  name  of  'ideo- 
motor'  action,  meaning  action  without  express 
decision  or  effort.  Most  of  the  habitual  actions 
to  which  we  are  trained  are  of  this  ideo-motor 
sort.  We  perceive,  for  instance,  that  the  door  is 
open,  and  we  rise  and  shut  it ;  we  perceive  some 
raisins  in  a  dish  before  us,  and  extend  our  hand 
and  carry  one  of  them  to  our  mouth  without  in- 
terrupting the  conversation;  or,  when  lying  hi 
bed,  we  suddenly  think  that  we  shall  be  late  for 
breakfast,  and  instantly  we  get  up  with  no  par- 
ticular exertion  or  resolve.  All  the  ingrained 
procedures  by  which  life  is  carried  on  —  the  man- 
ners and  customs,  dressing  and  undressing,  acts 
of  salutation,  etc. —  are  executed  in  this  semi-auto- 
matic way  unhesitatingly  and  efficiently,  the  very 


172  TALKS  TO   TBACHEBS 

outermost  margin  of  consciousness  seeming  to  be 
concerned  in  them,  while  the  focus  may  be  occu- 
pied with  widely  different  things. 

But  now  turn  to  a  more  complicated  case. 
Suppose  two  thoughts  to  be  in  the  mind  together, 
of  which  one,  A,  taken  alone,  would  discharge 
itself  in  a  certain  action,  but  of  which  the  other, 
B,  suggests  an  action  of  a  different  sort,  or  a 
consequence  of  the  first  action  calculated  to  make 
us  shrink.  The  psychologists  now  say  that  the 
second  idea,  B,  will  probably  arrest  or  inhibit  the 
motor  effects  of  the  first  idea,  A.  One  word, 
then,  about  '  inhibition '  in  general,  to  make  this 
particular  case  more  clear. 

One  of  the  most  interesting  discoveries  of  phys- 
iology was  the  discovery,  made  simultaneously  in 
France  and  Germany  fifty  years  ago,  that  nerve 
currents  do  not  only  start  muscles  into  action,  but 
may  check  action  already  going  on  or  keep  it  from 
occurring  as  it  otherwise  might.  Nerves  of  arrest 
were  thus  distinguished  alongside  of  motor  nerves. 
The  pneumogastric  nerve,  for  example,  if  stimu- 
lated, arrests  the  movements  of  the  heart :  the 
splanchnic  nerve  arrests  those  of  the  intestines,  if 
already  begun.  But  it  soon  appeared  that  this 


THE   FUNCTION   OF   INHIBITION  173 

was  too  narrow  a  way  of  looking  at  the  matter, 
and  that  arrest  is  not  so  much  the  specific  function 
of  certain  nerves  as  a  general  function  which  any 
part  of  the  nervous  system  may  exert  upon  other 
parts  under  the  appropriate  conditions.  The 
higher  centres,  for  example,  seem  to  exert  a  con- 
stant inhibitive  influence  on  the  excitability  of 
those  below.  The  reflexes  of  an  animal  with  its 
hemispheres  wholly  or  in  part  removed  become 
exaggerated.  You  all  know  that  common  reflex 
in  dogs,  whereby,  if  you  scratch  the  animal's  side, 
the  corresponding  hind  leg  will  begin  to  make 
scratching  movements,  usually  in  the  air.  Now 
in  dogs  with  mutilated  hemispheres  this  scratch- 
ing reflex  is  so  incessant  that,  as  Goltz  first  de- 
scribed them,  the  hair  gets  all  worn  off  their 
sides.  In  idiots,  the  functions  of  the  hemispheres 
being  largely  in  abeyance,  the  lower  impulses, 
not  inhibited,  as  they  would  be  in  normal  human 
beings,  often  express  themselves  in  most  odious 
ways.  You  know  also  how  any  higher  emotional 
tendency  will  quench  a  lower  one.  Fear  arrests 
appetite,  maternal  love  annuls  fear,  respect  checks 
sensuality,  and  the  like ;  and  in  the  more  subtile 
manifestations  of  the  moral  life,  whenever  an 
ideal  stirring  is  suddenly  quickened  into  inten- 


174  TALKS   TO   TEACHERS 

sity,  it  is  as  if  the  whole  scale  of  values  of  our 
motives  changed  its  equilibrium.  The  force  of 
old  temptations  vanishes,  and  what  a  moment 
ago  was  impossible  is  now  not  only  possible,  but 
easy,  because  of  their  inhibition.  This  has  been 
well  called  the  'expulsive  power  of  the  higher 
emotion.' 

It  is  eaey  to  apply  this  notion  of  inhibition  to 
the  case  of  our  ideational  processes.  I  am  lying 
in  bed,  for  example,  and  think  it  is  time  to  get 
up ;  but  alongside  of  this  thought  there  is  present 
to  my  mind  a  realization  of  the  extreme  coldness 
of  the  morning  and  the  pleasantness  of  the  warm 
bed.  In  such  a  situation  the  motor  consequences 
of  the  first  idea  are  blocked ;  and  I  may  remain  for 
half  an  hour  or  more  with  the  two  ideas  oscillatr 
ing  before  me  in  a  kind  of  deadlock,  which  is 
what  we  call  the  state  of  hesitation  or  delibera- 
tion. In  a  case  like  this  the  deliberation  can  be 
resolved  and  the  decision  reached  in  either  of  two 
ways :  — 

(1)  I  may  forget  for  a  moment  the  thermomet- 
ric  conditions,  and  then  the  idea  of  getting  up 
will  immediately  discharge  into  act :   I  shall  sud- 
denly find  that  I  have  got  up  —  or 

(2)  Still  mindful  of  the   freezing  temperature, 


ANY  IDEA  MAY   BE  INHIBITORY  175 

the  thought  of  the  duty  of  rising  may  become  so 
pungent  that  it  determines  action  in  spite  of  in- 
hibition. In  the  latter  case,  I  have  a  sense  of 
energetic  moral  effort,  and  consider  that  I  have 
done  a  virtuous  act. 

All  cases  of  wilful  action  properly  so  called,  of 
choice  after  hesitation  and  deliberation,  may  be 
conceived  after  one  of  these  latter  patterns.  So 
you  see  that  volition,  in  the  narrower  sense,  takes 
place  only  when  there  are  a  number  of  conflicting 
systems  of  ideas,  and  depends  on  our  having  a 
complex  field  of  consciousness.  The  interesting 
thing  to  note  is  the  extreme  delicacy  of  the  inhibi- 
tive  machinery.  A  strong  and  urgent  motor  idea 
in  the  focus  may  be  neutralized  and  made  inopera- 
tive by  the  presence  of  the  very  faintest  contradic- 
tory idea  in  the  margin.  For  instance,  I  hold  out 
my  forefinger,  and  with  closed  eyes  try  to  realize 
as  vividly  as  possible  that  I  hold  a  revolver  in  my 
hand  and  am  pulling  the  trigger.  I  can  even  now 
fairly  feel  my  finger  quivering  with  the  tendency 
to  contract ;  and,  if  it  were  hitched  to  a  recording 
apparatus,  it  would  certainly  betray  its  state  of 
tension  by  registering  incipient  movements.  Yet 
it  does  not  actually  crook,  and  the  movement  of 
pulling  the  trigger  is  not  performed.  Why  not  ? 


176  TALKS   TO   TEACHERS 

Simply  because,  all  concentrated  though  I  am 
upon  the  idea  of  the  movement,  I  nevertheless 
also  realize  the  total  conditions  of  the  experiment, 
and  in  the  back  of  my  mind,  so  to  speak,  or  in  its 
fringe  and  margin,  have  the  simultaneous  idea 
that  the  movement  is  not  to  take  place.  The 
mere  presence  of  that  marginal  intention,  without 
effort,  urgency,  or  emphasis,  or  any  special  rein- 
forcement from  my  attention,  suffices  to  the  in- 
hibitive  effect. 

And  this  is  why  so  few  of  the  ideas  that  flit 
through  our  minds  do,  in  point  of  fact,  produce 
their  motor  consequences.  Life  would  be  a  curse 
and  a  care  for  us  if  every  fleeting  fancy  were  to 
do  so.  Abstractly,  the  law  of  ideo-motor  action 
is  true;  but  in  the  concrete  our  fields  of  con- 
sciousness are  always  so  complex  that  the  inhibit- 
ing margin  keeps  the  centre  inoperative  most  of 
the  time.  In  all  this,  you  see,  I  speak  as  if  ideas 
by  their  mere  presence  or  absence  determined  be- 
havior, and  as  if  between  the  ideas  themselves  on 
the  one  hand  and  the  conduct  on  the  other  there 
were  no  room  for  any  third  intermediate  principle 
of  activity,  like  that  called  '  the  will.' 


MAN'S  CONDUCT  AS  A  EESULTANT       177 

If  you  are  struck  by  the  materialistic  or  fatal- 
istic doctrines  which  seem  to  follow  this  concep- 
tion, I  beg  you  to  suspend  your  judgment  for  a 
moment,  as  I  shall  soon  have  something  more  to 
say  about  the  matter.  But,  meanwhile  yielding 
one's  self  to  the  mechanical  conception  of  the 
psychophysical  organism,  nothing  is  easier  than 
to  indulge  in  a  picture  of  the  fatalistic  character 
of  human  life.  Man's  conduct  appears  as  the 
mere  resultant  of  all  his  various  impulsions  and 
inhibitions.  One  object,  by  its  presence,  makes 
us  act:  another  object  checks  our  action.  Feel- 
ings aroused  and  ideas  suggested  by  objects  sway 
us  one  way  and  another:  emotions  complicate 
the  game  by  their  mutual  inhibitive  effects,  the 
higher  abolishing  the  lower  or  perhaps  being  it- 
self swept  away.  The  life  in  all  this  becomes  pru- 
dential and  moral ;  but  the  psychologic  agents  in 
the  drama  may  be  described,  you  see,  as  nothing 
but  the  'ideas'  themselves, — ideas  for  the  whole 
system  of  which  what  we  call  the  *  soul '  or  *  char- 
acter' or  'will'  of  the  person  is  nothing  but  a 
collective  name.  As  Hume  said,  the  ideas  are 
themselves  the  actors,  the  stage,  the  theatre,  the 
spectators,  and  the  play.  This  is  the  so-called  '  as 
sociationist '  psychology,  brought  down  to  its  rad- 


178  TALKS   TO   TEACHERS 

ical  expression :  it  is  useless  to  ignore  its  power 
as  a  conception.  Like  all  conceptions,  when  they 
become  clear  and  lively  enough,  this  conception 
has  a  strong  tendency  to  impose  itself  upon  be- 
lief; and  psychologists  trained  on  biological  lines 
usually  adopt  it  as  the  last  word  of  science  on  the 
subject.  No  one  can  have  an  adequate  notion  of 
modern  psychological  theory  unless  he  has  at 
some  time  apprehended  this  view  in  the  full  force 
of  its  simplicity. 

Let  us  humor  it  for  a  while,  for  it  has  advan- 
tages in  the  way  of  exposition. 

Voluntary  action,  then,  is  at  all  times  a  resultant 
of  the  compounding  of  our  impulsions  with  our  inhi- 
bitions. 

From  this  it  immediately  follows  that  there  will 
be  two  types  of  will,  in  one  of  which  impulsions 
will  predominate,  in  the  other  inhibitions.  We 
may  speak  of  them,  if  you  like,  as  the  precipitate 
and  the  obstructed  will,  respectively.  When  fully 
pronounced,  they  are  familiar  to  everybody.  The 
extreme  example  of  the  precipitate  will  is  the 
maniac:  his  ideas  discharge  into  action  so  rap- 
idly, his  associative  processes  are  so  extravagantly 
lively,  that  inhibitions  have  no  time  to  arrive,  and 


THE  TWO   EXTREME  TYPES   OF   WILL        179 

he  says  and  does  whatever  pops  into  his  head 
without  a  moment  of  hesitation. 

Certain  melancholiacs  furnish  the  extreme  ex- 
ample of  the  over-inhibited  type.  Their  minds 
are  cramped  in  a  fixed  emotion  of  fear  or  helpless- 
ness, their  ideas  confined  to  the  one  thought  that 
for  them  life  is  impossible.  So  they  show  a  con- 
dition of  perfect  'abulia,'  or  inability  to  will  or 
act.  They  cannot  change  their  posture  or  speech 
or  execute  the  simplest  command. 

The  different  races  of  men  show  different  tem- 
peraments in  this  regard.  The  southern  races 
are  commonly  accounted  the  more  impulsive  and 
precipitate :  the  English  race,  especially  our  New 
England  branch  of  it,  is  supposed  to  be  all  sicklied 
over  with  repressive  forms  of  self-consciousness, 
and  condemned  to  express  itself  through  a  jungle 
of  scruples  and  checks. 

The  highest  form  of  character,  however,  ab- 
stractly considered,  must  be  full  of  scruples  and 
inhibitions.  But  action,  in  such  a  character,  far 
from  being  paralyzed,  will  succeed  in  energet- 
ically keeping  on  its  way,  sometimes  overpowering 
the  resistances,  sometimes  steering  along  the  line 
where  they  lie  thinnest. 

Just  as  our  flexor  muscles  act  most  firmly  when 


180  TALKS  TO   TEACHERS 

a  simultaneous  contraction  of  the  flexors  guides 
and  steadies  them;  so  the  mind  of  him  whose  fields 
of  consciousness  are  complex,  and  who,  with  the 
reasons  for  the  action,  sees  the  reasons  against  it, 
and  yet,  instead  of  being  palsied,  acts  in  the  way 
that  takes  the  whole  field  into  consideration, — 
so,  I  say,  is  such  a  mind  the  ideal  sort  of  mind 
that  we  should  seek  to  reproduce  in  our  pupils. 
Purely  impulsive  action,  or  action  that  proceeds 
to  extremities  regardless  of  consequences,  on  the 
other  hand,  is  the  easiest  action  in  the  world,  and 
the  lowest  in  type.  Any  one  can  show  energy, 
when  made  quite  reckless.  An  Oriental  despot 
requires  but  little  ability :  as  long  as  he  lives,  he 
succeeds,  for  he  has  absolutely  his  own  way ;  and, 
when  the  world  can  no  longer  endure  the  horror 
of  him,  he  is  assassinated.  But  not  to  proceed 
immediately  to  extremities,  to  be  still  able  to  act 
energetically  under  an  array  of  inhibitions, —  that 
indeed  is  rare  and  difficult.  Cavour,  when  urged 
to  proclaim  martial  law  in  1859,  refused  to  do  so, 
saying :  "  Any  one  can  govern  in  that  way.  I  will 
be  constitutional."  Your  parliamentary  rulers, 
your  Lincoln,  your  Gladstone,  are  the  strongest 
type  of  man,  because  they  accomplish  results 
under  the  most  intricate  possible  conditions.  We 


THE  BALKY  WILL  181 

think  of  Napoleon  Bonaparte  as  a  colossal  monster 
of  will-power,  and  truly  enough  he  was  so.  But, 
from  the  point  of  view  of  the  psychological  ma- 
chinery, it  would  be  hard  to  say  whether  he  or 
Gladstone  was  the  larger  volitional  quantity ;  for 
Napoleon  disregarded  all  the  usual  inhibitions, 
and  Gladstone,  passionate  as  he  was,  scrupulously 
considered  them  in  his  statesmanship. 

A  familiar  example  of  the  paralyzing  power  of 
scruples  is  the  inhibitive  effect  of  conscientious- 
ness upon  conversation.  Nowhere  does  conversa- 
tion seem  to  have  flourished  as  brilliantly  as  in 
France  during  the  last  century.  But,  if  we  read 
old  French  memoirs,  we  see  how  many  brakes 
of  scrupulosity  which  tie  our  tongues  to-day  were 
then  removed.  Where  mendacity,  treachery,  ob- 
scenity, and  malignity  find  unhampered  expression, 
talk  can  be  brilliant  indeed.  But  its  flame  waxes 
dim  where  the  mind  is  stitched  all  over  with  con- 
scientious fear  of  violating  the  moral  and  social 
proprieties. 

The  teacher  often  is  confronted  in  the  school- 
room with  an  abnormal  type  of  will,  which  we 
may  call  the  *  balky  will.'  Certain  children,  if  they 
do  not  succeed  in  doing  a  thing  immediately, 


182  TALKS  TO   TEACHERS 

remain  completely  inhibited  in  regard  to  it :  it 
becomes  literally  impossible  for  them  to  under- 
stand it  if  it  be  an  intellectual  problem,  or  to  do  it 
if  it  be  an  outward  operation,  as  long  as  this  par- 
ticular inhibited  condition  lasts.  Such  children 
are  usually  treated  as  sinful,  and  are  punished ;  or 
else  the  teacher  pits  his  or  her  will  against  the 
child's  will,  considering  that  the  latter  must  be 
*  broken.'  "Break  your  child's  will,  in  order  that 
it  may  not  perish,"  wrote  John  Wesley.  "  Break 
its  will  as  soon  as  it  can  speak  plainly  —  or  even 
before  it  can  speak  at  all.  It  should  be  forced  to 
do  as  it  is  told,  even  if  you  have  to  whip  it  ten 
times  running.  Break  its  will,  in  order  that  its 
soul  may  live."  Such  will-breaking  is  always  a 
scene  with  a  great  deal  of  nervous  wear  and  tear 
on  both  sides,  a  bad  state  of  feeling  left  behind  it, 
and  the  victory  not  always  with  the  would-be 
will-breaker. 

When  a  situation  of  the  kind  is  once  fairly  de- 
Teloped,  and  the  child  is  all  tense  and  excited 
inwardly,  nineteen  times  out  of  twenty  it  is  best 
for  the  teacher  to  apperceive  the  case  as  one  of 
neural  pathology  rather  than  as  one  of  moral 
culpability.  So  long  as  the  inhibiting  sense  of 
impossibility  remains  in  the  child's  mind,  he  will 


THE  TEACHEBS'   IDEAL  183 

continue  unable  to  get  beyond  the  obstacle.  The 
aim  of  the  teacher  should  then  be  to  make  him 
simply  forget.  Drop  the  subject  for  the  time, 
divert  the  mind  to  something  else :  then,  leading 
the  pupil  back  by  some  circuitous  line  of  associa- 
tion, spring  it  on  him  again  before  he  has  time  to 
recognize  it,  and  as  likely  as  not  he  will  go  over 
it  now  without  any  difficulty.  It  is  in  no  other 
way  that  we  overcome  balkiness  in  a  horse :  we 
divert  his  attention,  do  something  to  his  nose  or 
ear,  lead  him  round  in  a  circle,  and  thus  get  him. 
over  a  place  where  flogging  would  only  have 
made  him  more  invincible.  A  tactful  teacher  will 
never  let  these  strained  situations  come  up  at  all. 

You  perceive  now,  my  friends,  what  your  gen- 
eral or  abstract  duty  is  as  teachers.  Although 
you  have  to  generate  in  your  pupils  a  large  stock 
of  ideas,  any  one  of  which  may  be  inhibitory,  yet 
you  must  also  see  to  it  that  no  habitual  hesitancy 
or  paralysis  of  the  will  ensues,  and  that  the  pupil 
still  retains  his  power  of  vigorous  action.  Psy- 
chology can  state  your  problem  in  these  terms, 
but  you  see  how  impotent  she  is  to  furnish  the 
elements  of  its  practical  solution.  When  all  is 
said  and  done,  and  your  best  efforts  are  made,  it 


184  TALKS   TO  TEACHEES 

will  probably  remain  true  that  the  result  will 
depend  more  on  a  certain  native  tone  or  temper 
in  the  pupil's  psychological  constitution  than  on 
anything  else.  Some  persons  appear  to  have  a 
naturally  poor  focalization  of  the  field  of  con- 
sciousness; and  in  such  persons  actions  hang 
slack,  and  inhibitions  seem  to  exert  peculiarly 
easy  sway. 

But  let  us  now  close  in  a  little  more  closely  on 
this  matter  of  the  education  of  the  will.  Your 
task  is  to  build  up  a  character  in  your  pupils ;  and 
a  character,  as  I  have  so  often  said,  consists  in  an 
organized  set  of  habits  of  reaction.  Now  of  what 
do  such  habits  of  reaction  themselves  consist? 
They  consist  of  tendencies  to  act  characteris- 
tically when  certain  ideas  possess  us,  and  to 
refrain  characteristically  when  possessed  by  other 
ideas. 

Our  volitional  habits  depend,  then,  first,  on 
what  the  stock  of  ideas  is  which  we  have ;  and, 
second,  on  the  habitual  coupling  of  the  several 
ideas  with  action  or  inaction  respectively.  How 
is  it  when  an  alternative  is  presented  to  you  for 
choice,  and  you  are  uncertain  what  you  ought  to 
do  ?  You  first  hesitate,  and  then  you  deliberate. 
And  in  what  does  your  deliberation  consist  ?  It 


CHABACTER-BTJILDING  185 

consists  in  trying  to  apperceive  the  case  succes- 
sively by  a  number  of  different  ideas,  which  seem 
to  fit  it  more  or  less,  until  at  last  you  hit  on  one 
which  seems  to  fit  it  exactly.  If  that  be  an  idea 
which  is  a  customary  forerunner  of  action  in  you, 
which  enters  into  one  of  your  maxims  of  positive 
behavior,  your  hesitation  ceases,  and  you  act  im- 
mediately. If,  on  the  other  hand,  it  be  an  idea 
which  carries  inaction  as  its  habitual  result,  if  it 
ally  itself  with  prohibition,  then  you  unhesitat- 
ingly refrain.  The  problem  is,  you  see,  to  find 
the  right  idea  or  conception  for  the  case.  This 
search  for  the  right  conception  may  take  days  or 
weeks. 

I  spoke  as  if  the  action  were  easy  when  the 
conception  once  is  found.  Often  it  is  so,  but  it 
may  be  otherwise ;  and,  when  it  is  otherwise,  we 
find  ourselves  at  the  very  centre  of  a  moral  sit- 
uation, into  which  I  should  now  like  you  to  look 
with  me  a  little  nearer. 

The  proper  conception,  the  true  head  of  clas- 
sification, may  be  hard  to  attain ;  or  it  may  be  one 
with  which  we  have  contracted  no  settled  habits 
of  action.  Or,  again,  the  action  to  which  it  would 
prompt  may  be  dangerous  and  difficult ;  or  else 
inaction  may  appear  deadly  cold  and  negative 


186  TALKS   TO   TEACHERS 

when  our  impulsive  feeling  is  hot.  In  either  of 
these  latter  cases  it  is  hard  to  hold  the  right  idea 
steadily  enough  before  the  attention  to  let  it  exert 
its  adequate  effects.  Whether  it  be  stimulative 
or  inhibitive,  it  is  too  reasonable  for  us ;  and  the 
more  instinctive  passional  propensity  then  tends 
to  extrude  it  from  our  consideration.  We  shy 
away  from  the  thought  of  it.  It  twinkles  and 
goes  out  the  moment  it  appears  in  the  margin  of 
our  consciousness ;  and  we  need  a  resolute  effort 
of  voluntary  attention  to  drag  it  into  the  focus 
of  the  field,  and  to  keep  it  there  long  enough  for 
its  associative  and  motor  effects  to  be  exerted. 
Every  one  knows  only  too  well  how  the  mind 
flinches  from  looking  at  considerations  hostile  to 
the  reigning  mood  of  feeling. 

Once  brought,  however,  in  this  way  to  the  cen- 
tre of  the  field  of  consciousness,  and  held  there, 
the  reasonable  idea  will  exert  these  effects  inevi- 
tably; for  the  laws  of  connection  between  our 
consciousness  and  our  nervous  system  provide  for 
the  action  then  taking  place.  Our  moral  effort, 
properly  so  called,  terminates  in  our  holding  fast 
to  the  appropriate  idea. 

If,  then,  you  are  asked,  "In  what  does  a  moral 
act  consist  when  reduced  to  its  simplest  and  most 


TO   THINK   IS   THE   MOKAL   ACT  187 

elementary  form?"  you  can  make  only  one  reply. 
You  can  say  that  it  consists  in  the  effort  of  atten- 
tion by  which  we  hold  fast  to  an  idea  which  but  for 
that  effort  of  attention  would  be  driven  out  of  the 
mind  by  the  other  psychological  tendencies  that 
are  there.  To  think,  in  short,  is  the  secret  of  will, 
just  as  it  is  the  secret  of  memory. 

This  comes  out  very  clearly  in  the  kind  of 
excuse  which  we  most  frequently  hear  from  per- 
sons who  find  themselves  confronted  by  the  sin- 
fulness  or  harmfulness  of  some  part  of  their 
behavior.  " I  never  thought"  they  say.  " I  never 
thought  how  mean  the  action  was,  I  never  thought 
of  these  abominable  consequences."  And  what 
do  we  retort  when  they  say  this  ?  We  say :  "  Why 
didn't  you  think  ?  What  were  you  there  for  but 
to  think?"  And  we  read  them  a  moral  lecture 
on  their  irreflectiveness. 

The  hackneyed  example  of  moral  deliberation 
is  the  case  of  an  habitual  drunkard  under  tempta- 
tion. He  has  made  a  resolve  to  reform,  but  he  is 
now  solicited  again  by  the  bottle.  His  moral  tri- 
umph or  failure  literally  consists  in  his  finding 
the  right  name  for  the  case.  If  he  says  that  it  is 
a  case  of  not  wasting  good  liquor  already  poured 
out,  or  a  case  of  not  being  churlish  and  unsociable 


188  TALKS  TO   TEACHERS 

when  in  the  midst  of  friends,  or  a  case  of  learning 
something  at  last  about  a  brand  of  whiskey  which 
he  never  met  before,  or  a  case  of  celebrating  a 
public  holiday,  or  a  case  of  stimulating  himself 
to  a  more  energetic  resolve  in  favor  of  abstinence 
than  any  he  has  ever  yet  made,  then  he  is  lost. 
His  choice  of  the  wrong  name  seals  his  doom. 
But  if,  in  spite  of  all  the  plausible  good  names 
with  which  his  thirsty  fancy  so  copiously  furnishes 
him,  he  unwaveringly  clings  to  the  truer  bad 
name,  and  apperceives  the  case  as  that  of  "  being 
a  drunkard,  being  a  drunkard,  being  a  drunkard," 
his  feet  are  planted  on  the  road  to  salvation.  He 
saves  himself  by  thinking  rightly. 

Thus  are  your  pupils  to  be  saved :  first,  by  the 
stock  of  ideas  with  which  you  furnish  them ;  sec- 
ond, by  the  amount  of  voluntary  attention  that 
they  can  exert  in  holding  to  the  right  ones,  how- 
ever unpalatable  ;  and,  third,  by  the  several  habits 
of  acting  definitely  on  these  latter  to  which  they 
have  been  successfully  trained. 

In  all  this  the  power  of  voluntarily  attending 
is  the  point  of  the  whole  procedure.  Just  as  a 
balance  turns  on  its  knife-edges,  so  on  it  our  moral 
destiny  turns.  You  remember  that,  when  we  were 
talking  of  the  subject  of  attention,  we  discovered 


WILL  IS   ATTENTION  TO   AN  IDEA  189 

how  much  more  intermittent  and  brief  our  acts 
of  voluntary  attention  are  than  is  commonly  sup- 
posed. If  they  were  all  summed  together,  the  time 
that  they  occupy  would  cover  an  almost  incredibly 
small  portion  of  our  lives.  But  I  also  said,  you 
will  remember,  that  their  brevity  was  not  in  pro- 
portion to  their  significance,  and  that  I  should  re- 
turn to  the  subject  again.  So  I  return  to  it  now. 
It  is  not  the  mere  size  of  a  thing  which  constitutes 
its  importance:  it  is  its  position  in  the  organism 
to  which  it  belongs.  Our  acts  of  voluntary  atten- 
tion, brief  and  fitful  as  they  are,  are  nevertheless 
momentous  and  critical,  determining  us,  as  they 
do,  to  higher  or  lower  destinies.  The  exercise  of 
voluntary  attention  in  the  schoolroom  must  there- 
fore be  counted  one  of  the  most  important  points 
of  training  that  take  place  there ;  and  the  first- 
rate  teacher,  by  the  keenness  of  the  remoter  in- 
terests which  he  is  able  to  awaken,  will  provide 
abundant  opportunities  for  its  occurrence.  I  hope 
that  you  appreciate  this  now  without  any  further 
explanation. 

I  have  been  accused  of  holding  up  before  you, 
in  the  course  of  these  talks,  a  mechanical  and 
even  a  materialistic  view  of  the  mind.  I  have 


190  TALKS   TO   TEACHERS 

called  it  an  organism  and  a  machine.  I  have 
spoken  of  its  reaction  on  the  environment  as  the 
essential  thing  about  it ;  and  I  have  referred  this, 
either  openly  or  implicitly,  to  the  construction  of 
the  nervous  system.  I  have,  in  consequence,  re- 
ceived notes  from  some  of  you,  begging  me  to  be 
more  explicit  on  this  point ;  and  to  let  you  know 
frankly  whether  I  am  a  complete  materialist, 
or  not. 

Now  in  these  lectures  I  wish  to  be  strictly  prac- 
tical and  useful,  and  to  keep  free  from  all  specu- 
lative complications.  Nevertheless,  I  do  not  wish 
to  leave  any  ambiguity  about  my  own  position; 
and  I  will  therefore  say,  in  order  to  avoid  all  mis- 
understanding, that  in  no  sense  do  I  count  myself 
a  materialist.  I  cannot  see  how  such  a  thing  as 
our  consciousness  can  possibly  be  produced  by  a 
nervous  machinery,  though  I  can  perfectly  well 
see  how,  if  '  ideas '  do  accompany  the  workings 
of  the  machinery,  the  order  of  the  ideas  might 
very  well  follow  exactly  the  order  of  the  ma- 
chine's operations.  Our  habitual  associations  of 
ideas,  trains  of  thought,  and  sequences  of  action, 
might  thus  be  consequences  of  the  succession  of 
currents  in  our  nervous  systems.  And  the  pos- 
sible stock  of  ideas  which  a  man's  free  spirit  would 


THE  'FREEDOM'  OF  THE  WILL          191 

have  to  choose  from  might  depend  exclusively  on 
the  native  and  acquired  powers  of  his  brain.  If 
this  were  all,  we  might  indeed  adopt  the  fatalist 
conception  which  I  sketched  for  you  but  a  short 
while  ago.  Our  ideas  would  be  determined  by 
brain  currents,  and  these  by  purely  mechanical 
laws. 

But,  after  what  we  have  just  seen, — namely,  the 
part  played  by  voluntary  attention  in  volition, — 
a  belief  in  free  will  and  purely  spiritual  causation 
is  still  open  to  us.  The  duration  and  amount  of 
this  attention  seem  within  certain  limits  indeter- 
minate. We  feel  as  if  we  could  make  it  really 
more  or  less,  and  as  if  our  free  action  in  this  re- 
gard were  a  genuine  critical  point  in  nature, — 
a  point  on  which  our  destiny  and  that  of  others 
might  hinge.  The  whole  question  of  free  will 
concentrates  itself,  then,  at  this  same  small  point : 
"Is  or  is  not  the  appearance  of  indetermination 
at  this  point  an  illusion  ?" 

It  is  plain  that  such  a  question  can  be  decided 
only  by  general  analogies,  and  not  by  accurate 
observations.  The  free-willist  believes  the  appear- 
ance to  be  a  reality :  the  detenninist  believes  that 
it  is  an  illusion.  I  myself  hold  with  the  free-will- 
ists, —  not  because  I  cannot  conceive  the  fatalist 


192  TALKS  TO   TEACHERS 

theory  clearly,  or  because  I  fail  to  understand  its 
plausibility,  but  simply  because,  if  free  will  were 
true,  it  would  be  absurd  to  have  the  belief  in  it 
fatally  forced  on  our  acceptance.  Considering  the 
inner  fitness  of  things,  one  would  rather  think 
that  the  very  first  act  of  a  will  endowed  with 
freedom  should  be  to  sustain  the  belief  in  the 
freedom  itself.  I  accordingly  believe  freely  in  my 
freedom ;  I  do  so  with  the  best  of  scientific  con- 
sciences, knowing  that  the  predetermination  of 
the  amount  of  my  effort  of  attention  can  never 
receive  objective  proof,  and  hoping  that,  whether 
you  follow  my  example  in  this  respect  or  not,  it 
will  at  least  make  you  see  that  such  psychological 
and  psychophysical  theories  as  I  hold  do  not 
necessarily  force  a  man  to  become  a  fatalist  or 
a  materialist. 

Let  me  say  one  more  final  word  now  about 
the  will,  and  therewith  conclude  both  that  im- 
portant subject  and  these  lectures. 

There  are  two  types  of  will.  There  are  also 
two  types  of  inhibition.  We  may  call  them  inhibi- 
tion by  repression  or  by  negation,  and  inhibition 
by  substitution,  respectively.  The  difference  be- 
tween them  is  that,  in  the  case  of  inhibition  by 


TWO  TYPES  OF  INHIBITION  193 

repression,  both  the  inhibited  idea  and  the  inhi- 
biting idea,  the  impulsive  idea  and  the  idea  that 
negates  it,  remain  along  with  each  other  in  con- 
sciousness, producing  a  certain  inward  strain  or 
tension  there :  whereas,  in  inhibition  by  substitu- 
tion, the  inhibiting  idea  supersedes  altogether  the 
idea  which  it  inhibits,  and  the  latter  quickly 
vanishes  from  the  field. 

For  instance,  your  pupils  are  wandering  in 
mind,  are  listening  to  a  sound  outside  the  win- 
dow, which  presently  grows  interesting  enough 
to  claim  all  their  attention.  You  can  call  the  lat- 
ter back  again  by  bellowing  at  them  not  to  listen 
to  those  sounds,  but  to  keep  their  minds  on  their 
books  or  on  what  you  are  saying.  And,  by  thus 
keeping  them  conscious  that  your  eye  is  sternly 
on  them,  you  may  produce  a  good  effect.  But  it 
will  be  a  wasteful  effect  and  an  inferior  effect ;  for 
the  moment  you  relax  your  supervision  the  at- 
tractive disturbance,  always  there  soliciting  their 
curiosity,  will  overpower  them,  and  they  will  be 
just  as  they  were  before :  whereas,  if,  without  say- 
ing anything  about  the  street  disturbances,  you 
open  a  counter-attraction  by  starting  some  very 
interesting  talk  or  demonstration  yourself,  they 
will  altogether  forget  the  distracting  incident,  and 


194  TALKS   TO   TEACHEKS 

without  any  effort  follow  you  along.  There  are 
many  interests  that  can  never  be  inhibited  by  the 
way  of  negation.  To  a  man  in  love,  for  example, 
it  is  literally  impossible,  by  any  effort  of  will,  to 
annul  his  passion.  But  let '  some  new  planet  swim 
into  his  ken,'  and  the  former  idol  will  immediately 
cease  to  engross  his  mind. 

It  is  clear  that  in  general  we  ought,  whenever 
we  can,  to  employ  the  method  of  inhibition  by 
substitution.  He  whose  life  is  based  upon  the 
word  *  no,'  who  tells  the  truth  because  a  lie  is 
wicked,  and  who  has  constantly  to  grapple  with 
his  envious  and  cowardly  and  mean  propensities, 
is  in  an  inferior  situation  in  every  respect  to  what 
he  would  be  if  the  love  of  truth  and  magnanimity 
positively  possessed  him  from  the  outset,  and  he 
felt  no  inferior  temptations.  Your  born  gentle- 
man is  certainly,  for  this  world's  purposes,  a  more 
valuable  being  than  your  "  Crump,  with  his  grunt- 
ing resistance  to  his  native  devils,"  even  though 
in  God's  sight  the  latter  may,  as  the  Catholic 
theologians  say,  be  rolling  up  great  stores  of 
*  merit.' 

Spinoza  long  ago  wrote  in  his  Ethics  that  any- 
thing that  a  man  can  avoid  under  the  notion  that 
it  is  bad  he  may  also  avoid  under  the  notion  that 


SPINOZA   ON   SLAVES   AND   FREEMEN         195 

something  else  is  good.  He  who  habitually  acts 
sub  specie  mali,  under  the  negative  notion,  the  no-, 
tion  of  the  bad,  is  called  a  slave  by  Spinoza.  To 
him  who  acts  habitually  under  the  notion  of  good 
he  gives  the  name  of  freeman.  See  to  it  now,  I 
beg  you,  that  you  make  freemen  of  your  pupils 
by  habituating  them  to  act,  whenever  possible, 
under  the  notion  of  a  good.  Get  them  habitually 
to  tell  the  truth,  not  so  much  through  showing 
them  the  wickedness  of  lying  as  by  arousing  their 
enthusiasm  for  honor  and  veracity.  Wean  them 
from  their  native  cruelty  by  imparting  to  them 
some  of  your  own  positive  sympathy  with  an  ani- 
mal's inner  springs  of  joy.  And,  in  the  lessons 
which  you  may  be  legally  obliged  to  conduct  upon 
the  bad  effects  of  alcohol,  lay  less  stress  than  the 
books  do  on  the  drunkard's  stomach,  kidneys, 
nerves,  and  social  miseries,  and  more  on  the  bless- 
ings of  having  an  organism  kept  in  lifelong  pos- 
session of  its  full  youthful  elasticity  by  a  sweet, 
sound  blood,  to  which  stimulants  and  narcotics 
are  unknown,  and  to  which  the  morning  sun  and 
air  and  dew  will  daily  come  as  sufficiently  power- 
ful intoxicants. 


196  CONCLUSION 

I  have  now  ended  these  talks.  If  to  some  of 
you  the  things  I  have  said  seem  obvious  or  trivial, 
it  is  possible  that  they  may  appear  less  so  when, 
in  the  course  of  a  year  or  two,  you  find  yourselves 
noticing  and  apperceiving  events  in  the  school- 
room a  little  differently,  in  consequence  of  some 
of  the  conceptions  I  have  tried  to  make  more 
clear.  I  cannot  but  think  that  to  apperceive  your 
pupil  as  a  little  sensitive,  impulsive,  associative, 
and  reactive  organism,  partly  fated  and  partly 
free,  will  lead  to  a  better  intelligence  of  all  his 
ways.  Understand  him,  then,  as  such  a  subtle 
little  piece  of  machinery.  And  if,  in  addition,  you 
can  also  see  him  sub  specie  boni,  and  love  him  as 
well,  you  will  be  in  the  best  possible  position  for 
becoming  perfect  teachers. 


TALKS  TO  STUDENTS 


I. 

THE    GOSPEL   OF  RELAXATION 

I  WISH  in  the  following  hour  to  take  certain 
psychological  doctrines  and  show  their  practical 
applications  to  mental  hygiene, —  to  the  hygiene 
of  our  American  life  more  particularly.  Our 
people,  especially  in  academic  circles,  are  turn- 
ing towards  psychology  nowadays  with  great  ex- 
pectations ;  and,  if  psychology  is  to  justify  them, 
it  must  be  by  showing  fruits  in  the  pedagogic  and 
therapeutic  lines. 

The  reader  may  possibly  have  heard  of  a  pecu- 
liar theory  of  the  emotions,  commonly  referred  to 
in  psychological  literature  as  the  Lange-James 
theory.  According  to  this  theory,  our  emotions 
are  mainly  due  to  those  organic  stirrings  that  are 
aroused  in  us  in  a  reflex  way  by  the  stimulus  of 
the  exciting  object  or  situation.  An  emotion  of 
fear,  for  example,  or  surprise,  is  not  a  direct  effect 
of  the  object's  presence  on  the  mind,  but  an  effect 
of  that  still  earlier  effect,  the  bodily  commotion 
which  the  object  suddenly  excites ;  so  that,  were 


200  TALKS  TO  STUDENTS 

this  bodily  commotion  suppressed,  we  should  not 
so  much/eeZ  fear  as  call  the  situation  fearful;  we 
should  not  feel  surprise,  but  coldly  recognize  that 
the  object  was  indeed  astonishing.  One  enthusi- 
ast has  even  gone  so  far  as  to  say  that  when  we 
feel  sorry  it  is  because  we  weep,  when  we  feel 
afraid  it  is  because  we  run  away,  and  not  con- 
versely. Some  of  you  may  perhaps  be  acquainted 
with  the  paradoxical  formula.  Now,  whatever 
exaggeration  may  possibly  lurk  in  this  account  of 
our  emotions  (and  I  doubt  myself  whether  the  ex- 
aggeration be  very  great),  it  is  certain  that  the 
main  core  of  it  is  true,  and  that  the  mere  giving 
way  to  tears,  for  example,  or  to  the  outward  ex- 
pression of  an  anger-fit,  will  result  for  the  moment 
in  making  the  inner  grief  or  anger  more  acutely 
felt.  There  is,  accordingly,  no  better  known  or 
more  generally  useful  precept  in  the  moral  train- 
ing of  youth,  or  in  one's  personal  self-discipline, 
than  that  which  bids  us  pay  primary  attention  to 
what  we  do  and  express,  and  not  to  care  too  much 
for  what  we  feel.  If  we  only  check  a  cowardly 
impulse  in  time,  for  example,  or  if  we  only  don't 
strike  the  blow  or  rip  out  with  the  complaining  or 
insulting  word  that  we  shall  regret  as  long  as  we 
live,  our  feelings  themselves  will  presently  be  the 


BEFLEX-THEORY   OF  EMOTION  201 

calmer  and  better,  with  no  particular  guidance 
from  us  on  their  own  account.  Action  seems  to 
follow  feeling,  but  really  action  and  feeling  go 
together;  and  by  regulating  the  action,  which  is 
under  the  more  direct  control  of  the  will,  we  can 
indirectly  regulate  the  feeling,  which  is  not. 

Thus  the  sovereign  voluntary  path  to  cheerful- 
ness, if  our  spontaneous  cheerfulness  be  lost,  is  to 
sit  up  cheerfully,  to  look  round  cheerfully,  and 
to  act  and  speak  as  if  cheerfulness  were  already 
there.  If  such  conduct  does  not  make  you  soon 
feel  cheerful,  nothing  else  on  that  occasion  can. 
So  to  feel  brave,  act  as  if  we  were  brave,  use  all 
our  will  to  that  end,  and  a  courage-fit  will  very 
likely  replace  the  fit  of  fear.  Again,  in  order  to 
feel  kindly  toward  a  person  to  whom  we  have 
been  inimical,  the  only  way  is  more  or  less  de- 
liberately to  smile,  to  make  sympathetic  inquiries, 
and  to  force  ourselves  to  say  genial  things.  One 
hearty  laugh  together  will  bring  enemies  into  a 
closer  communion  of  heart  than  hours  spent  on 
both  sides  in  inward  wrestling  with  the  mental 
demon  of  uncharitable  feeling.  To  wrestle  with 
a  bad  feeling  only  pins  our  attention  on  it,  and 
keeps  it  still  fastened  in  the  mind :  whereas,  if  we 
act  as  if  from  some  better  feeling,  the  old  bad  feel- 


202  TALKS  TO  STUDENTS 

ing  soon  folds  its  tent  like  an  Arab,  and  silently 
steals  away. 

The  best  manuals  of  religious  devotion  accord- 
ingly reiterate  the  maxim  that  we  must  let  our 
feelings  go,  and  pay  no  regard  to  them  whatever. 
In  an  admirable  and  widely  successful  little  book 
called  '  The  Christian's  Secret  of  a  Happy  Life,' 
by  Mrs.  Hannah  Whitall  Smith,  I  find  this  lesson 
on  almost  every  page.  Act  faithfully,  and  you 
really  have  faith,  no  matter  how  cold  and  even 
how  dubious  you  may  feel.  "  It  is  your  purpose 
God  looks  at,"  writes  Mrs.  Smith,  "  not  your  feel- 
ings about  that  purpose;  and  your  purpose,  or 
will,  is  therefore  the  only  thing  you  need  attend 
to.  ...  Let  your  emotions  come  or  let  them  go, 
just  as  God  pleases,  and  make  no  account  of  them 
either  way.  .  .  .  They  really  have  nothing  to  do 
with  the  matter.  They  are  not  the  indicators  of 
your  spiritual  state,  but  are  merely  the  indicators 
of  your  temperament  or  of  your  present  physical 
condition." 

But  you  all  know  these  facts  already,  so  I  need 
no  longer  press  them  on  your  attention.  From 
our  acts  and  from  our  attitudes  ceaseless  inpour- 
ing  currents  of  sensation  come,  which  help  to  de- 
termine from  moment  to  moment  what  our  inner 


THE   INlirER   LIFE   OF  INVALIDS  203 


states  shall  be  :  that  is  a  fundamental  law  of  psy- 
chology which  I  will  therefore  proceed  to  assume. 

A  Viennese  neurologist  of  considerable  reputa- 
tion has  recently  written  about  the  Binnenlelen, 
as  he  terms  it,  or  buried  life  of  human  beings. 
No  doctor,  this  writer  says,  can  get  into  really 
profitable  relations  with  a  nervous  patient  until 
he  gets  some  sense  of  what  the  patient's  Bin- 
nenleben  is,  of  the  sort  of  unuttered  inner  atmos- 
phere in  which  his  consciousness  dwells  alone 
with  the  secrets  of  its  prison-house.  This  inner 
personal  tone  is  what  we  can't  communicate  or 
describe  articulately  to  others  ;  but  the  wraith 
and  ghost  of  it,  so  to  speak,  are  often  what  our 
friends  and  intimates  feel  as  our  most  character 
istic  quality.  In  the  unhealthy-minded,  apart 
from  all  sorts  of  old  regrets,  ambitions  checked 
by  shames  and  aspirations  obstructed  by  timidi- 
ties, it  consists  mainly  of  bodily  discomforts  not 
distinctly  localized  by  the  sufferer,  but  breeding 
a  general  self-mistrust  and  sense  that  things  are 
not  as  they  should  be  with  him.  Half  the  thirst 
for  alcohol  that  exists  in  the  world  exists  simply 
because  alcohol  acts  as  a  temporary  anaesthetic 
and  effacer  to  all  these  morbid  feelings  that  never 


204  TALKS   TO   STUDENTS 

ought  to  be  in  a  human  being  at  all.  In  the 
healthy-minded,  on  the  contrary,  there  are  no 
fears  or  shames  to  discover;  and  the  sensations 
that  pour  in  from  the  organism  only  help  to  swell 
the  general  vital  sense  of  security  and  readiness 
for  anything  that  may  turn  up. 

Consider,  for  example,  the  effects  of  a  well- 
toned  motor-apparatus,  nervous  and  muscular,  on 
our  general  personal  self-consciousness,  the  sense 
of  elasticity  and  efficiency  that  results.  They 
tell  us  that  in  Norway  the  life  of  the  women  has 
lately  been  entirely  revolutionized  by  the  new 
order  of  muscular  feelings  with  which  the  use  of 
the  ski,  or  long  snow-shoes,  as  a  sport  for  both 
sexes,  has  made  the  women  acquainted.  Fifteen 
years  ago  the  Norwegian  women  were  even  more 
than  the  women  of  other  lands  votaries  of  the 
old-fashioned  ideal  of  femininity,  'the  domestic 
angel,'  the  *  gentle  and  refining  influence '  sort  of 
thing.  Now  these  sedentary  fireside  tabby-cats 
of  Norway  have  been  trained,  they  say,  by  the 
snow-shoes  into  lithe  and  audacious  creatures,  for 
whom  no  night  is  too  dark  or  height  too  giddy, 
and  who  are  not  only  saying  good-bye  to  the  tradi- 
tional feminine  pallor  and  delicacy  of  constitution, 
but  actually  taking  the  lead  in  every  educational 


MUSCULAR  TONE  AND  INNER  MOOD    205 

and  social  reform.  I  cannot  but  think  that  the 
tennis  and  tramping  and  skating  habits  and  the 
bicycle-craze  which  are  so  rapidly  extending 
among  our  dear  sisters  and  daughters  in  this 
country  are  going  also  to  lead  to  a  sounder  and 
heartier  moral  tone,  which  will  send  its  tonic 
breath  through  all  our  American  life. 

I  hope  that  here  in  America  more  and  more  the 
ideal  of  the  well-trained  and  vigorous  body  will 
be  maintained  neck  by  neck  with  that  of  the  well- 
trained  and  vigorous  mind  as  the  two  coequal 
halves  of  the  higher  education  for  men  and  women 
alike.  The  strength  of  the  British  Empire  lies  in 
the  strength  of  character  of  the  individual  Eng- 
lishman, taken  all  alone  by  himself.  And  that 
strength,  I  am  persuaded,  is  perennially  nourished 
and  kept  up  by  nothing  so  much  as  by  the  na- 
tional worship,  in  which  all  classes  meet,  of  ath- 
letic outdoor  life  and  sport. 

I  recollect,  years  ago,  reading  a  certain  work 
by  an  American  doctor  on  hygiene  and  the  laws 
of  life  and  the  type  of  future  humanity.  I  have 
forgotten  its  author's  name  and  its  title,  but  I  re- 
member well  an  awful  prophecy  that  it  contained 
about  the  future  of  our  muscular  system.  Human 
perfection,  the  writer  said,  means  ability  to  cope 


206  TALKS   TO   STUDENTS 

with  the  environment;  but  the  environment  will 
more  and  more  require  mental  power  from  us,  and 
less  and  less  will  ask  for  bare  brute  strength. 
Wars  will  cease,  machines  will  do  all  our  heavy 
work,  man  will  become  more  and  more  a  mere 
director  of  nature's  energies,  and  less  and  less  an 
exerter  of  energy  on  his  own  account.  So  that,  if 
the  homo  sapiens  of  the  future  can  only  digest  his 
food  and  think,  what  need  will  he  have  of  well- 
developed  muscles  at  all?  And  why,  pursued 
this  writer,  should  we  not  even  now  be  satisfied 
with  a  more  delicate  and  intellectual  type  of 
beauty  than  that  which  pleased  our  ancestors? 
Nay,  I  have  heard  a  fanciful  friend  make  a  still 
further  advance  in  this  '  new-man '  direction. 
With  our  future  food,  he  says,  itself  prepared 
in  liquid  form  from  the  chemical  elements  of  the 
atmosphere,  pepsinated  or  half-digested  in  ad- 
vance, and  sucked  up  through  a  glass  tube  from 
a  tin  can,  what  need  shall  we  have  of  teeth,  or 
stomachs  even?  They  may  go,  along  with  our 
muscles  and  our  physical  courage,  while,  challeng- 
ing ever  more  and  more  our  proper  admiration, 
will  grow  the  gigantic  domes  of  our  crania,  arch- 
ing over  our  spectacled  eyes,  and  animating  our 
flexible  little  lips  to  those  floods  of  learned  and 


MUSCULAB   TONE   AND   INNEB,   MOOD         207 

ingenious  talk  which  will  constitute  our  most 
congenial  occupation. 

I  am  sure  that  your  flesh  creeps  at  this  apoca- 
lyptic vision.  Mine  certainly  did  so ;  and  I  can- 
not believe  that  our  muscular  vigor  will  ever  be  a 
superfluity.  Even  if  the  day  ever  dawns  in  which 
it  will  not  be  needed  for  fighting  the  old  heavy 
battles  against  Nature,  it  will  still  always  be 
needed  to  furnish  the  background  of  sanity,  seren- 
ity, and  cheerfulness  to  life,  to  give  moral  elastic- 
ity to  our  disposition,  to  round  off  the  wiry  edge 
of  our  fretfulness,  and  make  us  good-humored 
and  easy  of  approach.  Weakness  is  too  apt  to 
be  what  the  doctors  call  irritable  weakness.  And 
that  blessed  internal  peace  and  confidence,  that 
acquiescentia  in  seipso,  as  Spinoza  used  to  call  it, 
that  wells  up  from  every  part  of  the  body  of  a 
muscularly  well-trained  human  being,  and  soaks 
the  indwelling  soul  of  him  with  satisfaction,  is, 
quite  apart  from  every  consideration  of  its  me- 
chanical utility,  an  element  of  spiritual  hygiene 
of  supreme  significance. 

And  now  let  me  go  a  step  deeper  into  mental 
hygiene,  and  try  to  enlist  your  insight  and  sym- 
pathy in  a  cause  which  I  believe  is  one  of  para- 
mount patriotic  importance  to  us  Yankees.  Many 


208  TALKS   TO   STUDENTS 

years  ago  a  Scottish  medical  man,  Dr.  Clouston, 
a  mad-doctor  as  they  call  him  there,  or  what  we 
should  call  an  asylum  physician  (the  most  eminent 
one  in  Scotland),  visited  this  country,  and  said 
something  that  has  remained  in  my  memory  ever 
since.  "  You  Americans,"  he  said,  "  wear  too 
much  expression  on  your  faces.  You  are  living 
like  an  army  with  all  its  reserves  engaged  in 
action.  The  duller  countenances  of  the  British 
population  betoken  a  better  scheme  of  life.  They 
suggest  stores  of  reserved  nervous  force  to  fall 
back  upon,  if  any  occasion  should  arise  that  re- 
quires it.  This  inexcitability,  this  presence  at 
all  times  of  power  not  used,  I  regard,"  continued 
Dr.  Clouston,  "as  the  great  safeguard  of  our 
British  people.  The  other  thing  in  you  gives 
me  a  sense  of  insecurity,  and  you  ought  some- 
how to  tone  yourselves  down.  You  really  do 
carry  too  much  expression,  you  take  too  intensely 
the  trivial  moments  of  life." 

Now  Dr.  Clouston  is  a  trained  reader  of  the 
secrets  of  the  soul  as  expressed  upon  the  counte- 
nance, and  the  observation  of  his  which  I  quote 
seems  to  me  to  mean  a  great  deal.  And  all 
Americans  who  stay  in  Europe  long  enough  to 
get  accustomed  to  the  spirit  that  reigns  and  ex- 


THE   OVER-EXPRESSION   OF   AMERICANS        209 

presses  itself  there,  so  unexcitable  as  compared 
with  ours,  make  a  similar  observation  when  they 
return  to  their  native  shores.  They  find  a  wild- 
eyed  look  upon  their  compatriots'  faces,  either  of 
too  desperate  eagerness  and  anxiety  or  of  too  in- 
tense responsiveness  and  good-will.  It  is  hard  to 
say  whether  the  men  or  the  women  show  it  most. 
It  is  true  that  we  do  not  all  feel  about  it  as  Dr. 
Clouston  felt.  Many  of  us,  far  from  deploring  it, 
admire  it.  We  say :  "  What  intelligence  it  shows ! 
How  different  from  the  stolid  cheeks,  the  codfish 
eyes,  the  slow,  inanimate  demeanor  we  have  been 
seeing  in  the  British  Isles ! "  Intensity,  rapidity, 
vivacity  of  appearance,  are  indeed  with  us  some- 
thing of  a  nationally  accepted  ideal ;  and  the  medi- 
cal notion  of  *  irritable  weakness '  is  not  the  first 
thing  suggested  by  them  to  our  mind,  as  it  was 
to  Dr.  Clouston's.  In  a  weekly  paper  not  very 
long  ago  I  remember  reading  a  story  in  which, 
after  describing  the  beauty  and  interest  of  the 
heroine's  personality,  the  author  summed  up  her 
charms  by  saying  that  to  all  who  looked  upon 
her  an  impression  as  of  'bottled  lightning'  was 
irresistibly  conveyed. 

Bottled  lightning,  in  truth,  is  one  of  our  Amer- 
ican ideals,  even  of  a  young  girl's  character !    Now 


210  TALKS   TO   STUDENTS 

it  is  most  ungracious,  and  it  may  seem  to  some 
persons  unpatriotic,  to  criticise  in  public  the  phys- 
ical peculiarities  of  one's  own  people,  of  one's  own 
family,  so  to  speak.  Besides,  it  may  be  said,  and 
said  with  justice,  that  there  are  plenty  of  bottled- 
lightning  temperaments  in  other  countries,  and 
plenty  of  phlegmatic  temperaments  here;  and 
that,  when  all  is  said  and  done,  the  more  or  less  of 
tension  about  which  I  am  making  such  a  fuss  is  a 
very  small  item  in  the  sum  total  of  a  nation's  life, 
and  not  worth  solemn  treatment  at  a  time  when 
agreeable  rather  than  disagreeable  things  should 
be  talked  about.  Well,  in  one  sense  the  more  or 
less  of  tension  in  our  faces  and  in  our  unused 
muscles  is  a  small  thing:  not  much  mechanical 
work  is  done  by  these  contractions.  But  it  is  not 
always  the  material  size  of  a  thing  that  measures 
its  importance :  often  it  is  its  place  and  function. 
One  of  the  most  philosophical  remarks  I  ever 
heard  made  was  by  an  unlettered  workman  who 
was  doing  some  repairs  at  my  house  many  years 
ago.  "  There  is  very  little  difference  between 
one  man  and  another,"  he  said,  "  when  you  go  to 
the  bottom  of  it.  But  what  little  there  is,  is  very 
important."  And  the  remark  certainly  applies 
to  this  case.  The  general  over-contraction  may 


THE  OVEB-CONTRACTED   PERSON  211 

be  small  when  estimated  in  foot-pounds,  but  its 
importance  is  immense  on  account  of  its  effects 
on  the  over-contracted  person's  spiritual  life.  This 
follows  as  a  necessary  consequence  from  the  the- 
ory of  our  emotions  to  which  I  made  reference  at 
the  beginning  of  this  article.  For  by  the  sensa- 
tions that  so  incessantly  pour  in  from  the  over- 
tense  excited  body  the  over-tense  and  excited 
habit  of  mind  is  kept  up ;  and  the  sultry,  threat- 
ening, exhausting,  thunderous  inner  atmosphere 
never  quite  clears  away.  If  you  never  wholly 
give  yourself  up  to  the  chair  you  sit  in,  but  al- 
ways keep  your  leg-  and  body-muscles  half  con- 
tracted for  a  rise ;  if  you  breathe  eighteen  or  nine- 
teen instead  of  sixteen  times  a  minute,  and  never 
quite  breathe  out  at  that, —  what  mental  mood 
can  you  be  in  but  one  of  inner  panting  and  ex- 
pectancy, and  how  can  the  future  and  its  worries 
possibly  forsake  your  mind  ?  On  the  other  hand, 
how  can  they  gain  admission  to  your  mind  if  your 
brow  be  unruffled,  your  respiration  calm  and  com- 
plete, and  your  muscles  all  relaxed  ? 

Now  what  is  the  cause  of  this  absence  of  re- 
pose, this  bottled-lightning  quality  in  us  Ameri- 
cans ?  The  explanation  of  it  that  is  usually  given 
is  that  it  comes  from  the  extreme  dryness  of  our 


212  TALKS   TO   STUDENTS 

climate  and  the  acrobatic  performances  of  our 
thermometer,  coupled  with  the  extraordinary  pro- 
gressiveness  of  our  life,  the  hard  work,  the  rail- 
road speed,  the  rapid  success,  and  all  the  other 
things  we  know  so  well  by  heart.  Well,  our  cli- 
mate is  certainly  exciting,  but  hardly  more  so 
than  that  of  many  parts  of  Europe,  where  never- 
theless no  bottled-lightning  girls  are  found.  And 
the  work  done  and  the  pace  of  life  are  as  extreme 
in  every  great  capital  of  Europe  as  they  are  here. 
To  me  both  of  these  pretended  causes  are  utterly 
insufficient  to  explain  the  facts. 

To  explain  them,  we  must  go  not  to  physical 
geography,  but  to  psychology  and  sociology.  The 
latest  chapter  both  in  sociology  and  in  psychology 
to  be  developed  in  a  manner  that  approaches  ade- 
quacy is  the  chapter  on  the  imitative  impulse. 
First  Bagehot,  then  Tarde,  then  Royce  and  Bald- 
win here,  have  shown  that  invention  and  imita- 
tion, taken  together,  form,  one  may  say,  the  entire 
warp  and  woof  of  human  life,  in  so  far  as  it  is  so- 
cial. The  American  over-tension  and  jerkiness 
and  breathlessness  and  intensity  and  agony  of  ex- 
pression are  primarily  social,  and  only  secondarily 
physiological,  phenomena.  They  are  lad  habits, 
nothing  more  or  less,  bred  of  custom  and  example, 


AMERICAN  TENSION  ONLY  A  BAD  HABIT     213 

born  of  the  imitation  of  bad  models  and  the  culti- 
vation of  false  personal  ideals.  How  are  idioms 
acquired,  how  do  local  peculiarities  of  phrase  and 
accent  come  about?  Through  an  accidental  ex- 
ample set  by  some  one,  which  struck  the  ears  of 
others,  and  was  quoted  and  copied  till  at  last 
every  one  in  the  locality  chimed  in.  Just  so  it  is 
with  national  tricks  of  vocalization  or  intonation, 
with  national  manners,  fashions  of  movement  and 
gesture,  and  habitual  expressions  of  face.  We, 
here  in  America,  through  following  a  succession 
of  pattern-setters  whom  it  is  now  impossible  to 
trace,  and  through  influencing  each  other  in  a  bad 
direction,  have  at  last  settled  down  collectively 
into  what,  for  better  or  worse,  is  our  own  charac- 
teristic national  type, —  a  type  with  the  produc- 
tion of  which,  so  far  as  these  habits  go,  the  cli- 
mate and  conditions  have  had  practically  nothing 
at  all  to  do. 

This  type,  which  we  have  thus  reached  by  our 
imitativeness,  we  now  have  fixed  upon  us,  for  bet- 
ter or  worse.  Now  no  type  can  be  wholly  disad- 
vantageous ;  but,  so  far  as  our  type  follows  the 
bottled-lightning  fashion,  it  cannot  be  wholly  good. 
Dr.  Clouston  was  certainly  right  in  thinking  that 
eagerness,  breathlessness,  and  anxiety  are  not  signs 


214  TALKS   TO   STUDENTS 

of  strength :  they  are  signs  of  weakness  and  of  bad 
co-ordination.  The  even  forehead,  the  slab-like 
cheek,  the  codfish  eye,  may  be  less  interesting  for 
the  moment;  but  they  are  more  promising  signs 
than  intense  expression  is  of  what  we  may  expect 
of  their  possessor  in  the  long  run.  Your  dull,  un- 
hurried worker  gets  over  a  great  deal  of  ground, 
because  he  never  goes  backward  or  breaks  down. 
Your  intense,  convulsive  worker  breaks  down  and 
has  bad  moods  so  often  that  you  never  know 
where  he  may  be  when  you  most  need  his  help, 
—  he  may  be  having  one  of  his  *  bad  days.'  We 
say  that  so  many  of  our  fellow-countrymen  col- 
lapse, and  have  to  be  sent  abroad  to  rest  their 
nerves,  because  they  work  so  hard.  I  suspect 
that  this  is  an  immense  mistake.  I  suspect  that 
neither  the  nature  nor  the  amount  of  our  work  is 
accountable  for  the  frequency  and  severity  of  our 
breakdowns,  but  that  their  cause  lies  rather  in 
those  absurd  feelings  of  hurry  and  having  no  time, 
in  that  breathlessness  and  tension,  that  anxiety  of 
feature  and  that  solicitude  for  results,  that  lack 
of  inner  harmony  and  ease,  in  short,  by  which 
with  us  the  work  is  so  apt  to  be  accompanied,  and 
from  which  a  European  who  should  do  the  same 
work  would  nine  times  out  of  ten  be  free.  These 


AMERICAN  FATIGUE  215 

perfectly  wanton  and  unnecessary  tricks  of  inner 
attitude  and  outer  manner  in  us,  caught  from  the 
social  atmosphere,  kept  up  by  tradition,  and  ideal- 
ized by  many  as  the  admirable  way  of  life,  are  the 
last  straws  that  break  the  American  camel's  back, 
the  final  overflowers  of  our  measure  of  wear  and 
tear  and  fatigue. 

The  voice,  for  example,  in  a  surprisingly  large 
number  of  us  has  a  tired  and  plaintive  sound. 
Some  of  us  are  really  tired  (for  I  do  not  mean 
absolutely  to  deny  that  our  climate  has  a  tiring 
quality)  ;  but  far  more  of  us  are  not  tired  at  all,  or 
would  not  be  tired  at  all  unless  we  had  got  into  a 
wretched  trick  of  feeling  tired,  by  following  the 
prevalent  habits  of  vocalization  and  expression. 
And  if  talking  high  and  tired,  and  living  excitedly 
and  hurriedly,  would  only  enable  us  to  do  more  by 
the  way,  even  while  breaking  us  down  in  the  end, 
it  would  be  different.  There  would  be  some  com- 
pensation, some  excuse,  for  going  on  so.  But  the 
exact  reverse  is  the  case.  It  is  your  relaxed  and 
easy  worker,  who  is  in  no  hurry,  and  quite  thought- 
less most  of  the  while  of  consequences,  who  is 
your  efficient  worker;  and  tension  and  anxiety, 
and  present  and  future,  all  mixed  up  together  in 
our  mind  at  once,  are  the  surest  drags  upon  steady 


216  TALKS   TO   STUDENTS 

progress  and  hindrances  to  our  success.  My  col- 
league, Professor  Miinsterberg,  an  excellent  ob- 
server, who  came  here  recently,  has  written  some 
notes  on  America  to  German  papers.  He  says  in 
substance  that  the  appearance  of  unusual  energy 
in  America  is  superficial  and  illusory,  being  really 
due  to  nothing  but  the  habits  of  jerkiness  and  bad 
co-ordination  for  which  we  have  to  thank  the  de- 
fective training  of  our  people.  I  think  myself 
that  it  is  high  time  for  old  legends  and  traditional 
opinions  to  be  changed ;  and  that,  if  any  one  should 
begin  to  write  about  Yankee  inefficiency  and  fee- 
bleness, and  inability  to  do  anything  with  time 
except  to  waste  it,  he  would  have  a  very  pretty 
paradoxical  little  thesis  to  sustain,  with  a  great 
many  facts  to  quote,  and  a  great  deal  of  experi- 
ence to  appeal  to  in  its  proof. 

Well,  my  friends,  if  our  dear  American  char- 
acter is  weakened  by  all  this  over-tension, —  and 
I  think,  whatever  reserves  you  may  make,  that 
you  will  agree  as  to  the  main  facts, —  where  does 
the  remedy  lie  ?  It  lies,  of  course,  where  lay  the 
origins  of  the  disease.  If  a  vicious  fashion  and 
taste  are  to  blame  for  the  thing,  the  fashion  and 
taste  must  be  changed.  And,  though  it  is  no 
small  thing  to  inoculate  seventy  millions  of  people 


WE  MUST  IMITATE  NEW  PATTERNS  217 

with  new  standards,  yet,  if  there  is  to  be  any  re- 
lief, that  will  have  to  be  done.  We  must  change 
ourselves  from  a  race  that  admires  jerk  and  snap 
for  their  own  sakes,  and  looks  down  upon  low 
voices  and  quiet  ways  as  dull,  to  one  that,  on  the 
contrary,  has  calm  for  its  ideal,  and  for  their  own 
sakes  loves  harmony,  dignity,  and  ease. 

So  we  go  back  to  the  psychology  of  imitation 
again.  There  is  only  one  way  to  improve  our- 
selves, and  that  is  by  some  of  us  setting  an  ex- 
ample which  the  others  may  pick  up  and  imitate 
till  the  new  fashion  spreads  from  east  to  west. 
Some  of  us  are  in  more  favorable  positions  than 
others  to  set  new  fashions.  Some  are  much  more 
striking  personally  and  imitable,  so  to  speak.  But 
no  living  person  is  sunk  so  low  as  not  to  be  imi- 
tated by  somebody.  Thackeray  somewhere  says 
of  the  Irish  nation  that  there  never  was  an  Irish- 
man so  poor  that  he  didn't  have  a  still  poorer 
Irishman  living  at  his  expense ;  and,  surely,  there 
is  no  human  being  whose  example  doesn't  work 
contagiously  in  some  particular.  The  very  idiots 
at  our  public  institutions  imitate  each  other's 
peculiarities.  And,  if  you  should  individually 
achieve  calmness  and  harmony  in  your  own  per- 
son, you  may  depend  upon  it  that  a  wave  of 


218  TALKS  TO   STUDENTS 

imitation  will  spread  from  you,  as  surely  as  the 
circles  spread  outward  when  a  stone  is  dropped 
into  a  lake. 

Fortunately,  we  shall  not  have  to  be  absolute 
pioneers.  Even  now  in  New  York  they  have  form- 
ed a  society  for  the  improvement  of  our  nation- 
al vocalization,  and  one  perceives  its  machina- 
tions already  in  the  shape  of  various  newspaper 
paragraphs  intended  to  stir  up  dissatisfaction  with 
the  awful  thing  that  it  is.  And,  better  still  than 
that,  because  more  radical  and  general,  is  the  gos- 
pel of  relaxation,  as  one  may  call  it,  preached  by 
Miss  Annie  Payson  Call,  of  Boston,  in  her  admi- 
rable little  volume  called  *  Power  through  Repose,' 
a  book  that  ought  to  be  in  the  hands  of  every 
teacher  and  student  in  America  of  either  sex. 
You  need  only  be  followers,  then,  on  a  path  al- 
ready opened  up  by  others.  But  of  one  thing  be 
confident :  others  still  will  follow  you. 

And  this  brings  me  to  one  more  application  of 
psychology  to  practical  life,  to  which  I  will  call 
attention  briefly,  and  then  close.  If  one's  example 
of  easy  and  calm  ways  is  to  be  effectively  conta- 
gious, one  feels  by  instinct  that  the  less  volunta- 
rily one  aims  at  getting  imitated,  the  more  uncon- 
scious one  keeps  in  the  matter,  the  more  likely 


EGOISTIC  PBEOCCUPATIONS  IMPEDE  ACTION     219 

one  is  to  succeed.  Become  the  imitdble  thing,  and 
you  may  then  discharge  your  minds  of  all  respon- 
sibility for  the  imitation.  The  laws  of  social  na- 
ture will  take  care  of  that  result.  Now  the  psycho- 
logical principle  on  which  this  precept  reposes  is 
a  law  of  very  deep  and  wide-spread  importance  in 
the  conduct  of  our  lives,  and  at  the  same  time  a 
law  which  we  Americans  most  grievously  neglect. 
Stated  technically,  the  law  is  this :  that  strong  fed- 
ing  about  one's  self  tends  to  arrest  the  free  associa- 
tion of  one's  objective  ideas  and  motor  processes. 
We  get  the  extreme  example  of  this  in  the  men- 
tal disease  called  melancholia. 

A  melancholic  patient  is  filled  through  and 
through  with  intensely  painful  emotion  about 
himself.  He  is  threatened,  he  is  guilty,  he  is 
doomed,  he  is  annihilated,  he  is  lost.  His  mind 
is  fixed  as  if  in  a  cramp  on  these  feelings  of  his 
own  situation,  and  in  all  the  books  on  insanity 
you  may  read  that  the  usual  varied  flow  of  his 
thoughts  has  ceased.  His  associative  processes, 
to  use  the  technical  phrase,  are  inhibited ;  and  his 
ideas  stand  stock-still,  shut  up  to  their  one  monot- 
onous function  of  reiterating  inwardly  the  fact  of 
the  man's  desperate  estate.  And  this  inhibitive 
influence  is  not  due  to  the  mere  fact  that  his  emo- 


220  TALKS  TO   STUDENTS 

tion  is  painful.  Joyous  emotions  about  the  self 
also  stop  the  association  of  our  ideas.  A  saint  in 
ecstasy  is  as  motionless  and  irresponsive  and  one- 
idea'd  as  a  melancholiac.  And,  without  going  as 
far  as  ecstatic  saints,  we  know  how  in  every  one 
a  great  or  sudden  pleasure  may  paralyze  the  flow 
of  thought.  Ask  young  people  returning  from  a 
party  or  a  spectacle,  and  all  excited  about  it,  what 
it  was.  "  Oh,  it  was  fine  !  it  was  fine  !  it  was  fine  !  " 
is  all  the  information  you  are  likely  to  receive 
until  the  excitement  has  calmed  down.  Probably 
every  one  of  my  hearers  has  been  made  tempo- 
rarily half-idiotic  by  some  great  success  or  piece 
of  good  fortune.  "  G-ood  !  GOOD  !  GOOD  !  "  is  all 
we  can  at  such  times  say  to  ourselves  until  we 
smile  at  our  own  very  foolishness. 

Now  from  all  this  we  can  draw  an  extremely 
practical  conclusion.  If,  namely,  we  wish  our 
trains  of  ideation  and  volition  to  be  copious  and 
varied  and  effective,  we  must  form  the  habit  of 
freeing  them  from  the  inhibitive  influence  of  re- 
flection upon  them,  of  egoistic  preoccupation  about 
their  results.  Such  a  habit,  like  other  habits,  can 
be  formed.  Prudence  and  duty  and  self-regard, 
emotions  of  ambition  and  emotions  of  anxiety, 
have,  of  course,  a  needful  part  to  play  in  our  lives. 


LET   YOUR   MACHINERY  RUN"  FREE          221 

But  confine  them  as  far  as  possible  to  the  occa- 
sions when  you  are  making  your  general  resolu- 
tions and  deciding  on  your  plans  of  campaign,  and 
keep  them  out  of  the  details.  When  once  a  de- 
cision is  reached  and  execution  is  the  order  of 
the  day,  dismiss  absolutely  all  responsibility  and 
care  about  the  outcome.  Unclamp,  in  a  word, 
your  intellectual  and  practical  machinery,  and  let 
it  run  free ;  and  the  service  it  will  do  you  will  be 
twice  as  good.  Who  are  the  scholars  who  get 
'  rattled '  in  the  recitation-room  ?  Those  who  think 
of  the  possibilities  of  failure  and  feel  the  great 
importance  of  the  act.  Who  are  those  who  do 
recite  well?  Often  those  who  are  most  indif- 
ferent. Their  ideas  reel  themselves  out  of  their 
memory  of  their  own  accord.  Why  do  we  hear 
the  complaint  so  often  that  social  life  in  New  Eng- 
land is  either  less  rich  and  expressive  or  more 
fatiguing  than  it  is  in  some  other  parts  of  the 
world?  To  what  is  the  fact,  if  fact  it  be,  due 
unless  to  the  over-active  conscience  of  the  people, 
afraid  of  either  saying  something  too  trivial  and 
obvious,  or  something  insincere,  or  something  un- 
worthy of  one's  interlocutor,  or  something  in  some 
way  or  other  not  adequate  to  the  occasion  ?  How 
can  conversation  possibly  steer  itself  through  such 


222  TALKS   TO    STUDENTS 

a  sea  of  responsibilities  and  inhibitions  as  this? 
On  the  other  hand,  conversation  does  flourish  and 
society  is  refreshing,  and  neither  dull  on  the  one 
hand  nor  exhausting  from  its  effort  on  the  other, 
wherever  people  forget  their  scruples  and  take 
the  brakes  off  their  hearts,  and  let  their  tongues 
wag  as  automatically  and  irresponsibly  as  they 
will. 

They  talk  much  in  pedagogic  circles  to-day 
about  the  duty  of  the  teacher  to  prepare  for  every 
lesson  in  advance.  To  some  extent  this  is  useful. 
But  we  Yankees  are  assuredly  not  those  to  whom 
such  a  general  doctrine  should  be  preached.  We 
are  only  too  careful  as  it  is.  The  advice  I  should 
give  to  most  teachers  would  be  in  the  words  of 
one  who  is  herself  an  admirable  teacher.  Prepare 
yourself  in  the  subject  so  well  that  it  shall  be  always 
on  tap:  then  in  the  class-room  trust  your  spon- 
taneity and  fling  away  all  further  care. 

My  advice  to  students,  especially  to  girl-stu- 
dents, would  be  somewhat  similar.  Just  as  a  bi- 
cycle-chain may  be  too  tight,  so  may  one's  careful- 
ness and  conscientiousness  be  so  tense  as  to  hinder 
the  running  of  one's  mind.  Take,  for  example, 
periods  when  there  are  many  successive  days  of 
examination  impending.  One  ounce  of  good  nerv- 


MORAL  OVER-TENSION  223 

ous  tone  in  an  examination  is  worth  many  pounds 
of  anxious  study  for  it  in  advance.  If  you  want 
really  to  do  your  best  at  an  examination,  fling 
away  the  book  the  day  before,  say  to  yourself,  "  I 
won't  waste  another  minute  on  this  miserable  thing, 
and  I  don't  care  an  iota  whether  I  succeed  or  not." 
Say  this  sincerely,  and  feel  it;  and  go  out  and 
play,  or  go  to  bed  and  sleep,  and  I  am  sure  the 
results  next  day  will  encourage  you  to  use  the 
method  permanently.  I  have  heard  this  advice 
given  to  a  student  by  Miss  Call,  whose  book  on 
muscular  relaxation  I  quoted  a  moment  ago.  In 
her  later  book,  entitled  '  As  a  Matter  of  Course,' 
the  gospel  of  moral  relaxation,  of  dropping  things 
from  the  mind,  and  not  '  caring ',  is  preached  with 
equal  success.  Not  only  our  preachers,  but  our 
friends  the  theosophists  and  mind-curers  of  various 
religious  sects  are  also  harping  on  this  string. 
And  with  the  doctors,  the  Delsarteans,  the  vari- 
ous mind  curing  sects,  and  such  writers  as  Mr. 
Dresser,  Prentice  Mulford,  Mr.  Horace  Fletcher, 
and  Mr.  Trine  to  help,  and  the  whole  band  of 
schoolteachers  and  magazine-readers  chiming  in, 
it  really  looks  as  if  a  good  start  might  be  made  in 
the  direction  of  changing  our  American  mental 
habit  into  something  more  indifferent  and  strong. 


224 

Worry  means  always  and  invariably  inhibition 
of  associations  and  loss  of  effective  power.  Of 
course,  the  sovereign  cure  for  worry  is  religious 
faith;  and  this,  of  course,  you  also  know.  The 
turbulent  billows  of  the  fretful  surface  leave  the 
deep  parts  of  the  ocean  undisturbed,  and  to  him 
who  has  a  hold  on  vaster  and  more  permanent 
realities  the  hourly  vicissitudes  of  his  personal 
destiny  seem  relatively  insignificant  things.  The 
really  religious  person  is  accordingly  unshakable 
and  full  of  equanimity,  and  calmly  ready  for  any 
duty  that  the  day  may  bring  forth.  This  is 
charmingly  illustrated  by  a  little  work  with  which 
I  recently  became  acquainted,  "  The  Practice  of 
the  Presence  of  God,  the  Best  Ruler  of  a  Holy 
Life,  by  Brother  Lawrence,  being  Conversations 
and  Letters  of  Nicholas  Herman  of  Lorraine, 
Translated  from  the  French."  *  I  extract  a  few 
passages,  the  conversations  being  given  in  in- 
direct discourse.  Brother  Lawrence  was  a  Car- 
melite friar,  converted  at  Paris  in  1666.  "He 
said  that  he  had  been  footman  to  M.  Fieubert, 
the  Treasurer,  and  that  he  was  a  great  awk- 
ward fellow,  who  broke  everything.  That  he  had 
desired  to  be  received  into  a  monastery,  thinking 

•Fleming  H.  Rerell  Company,  New  York. 


BROTHER   LAWRENCE  226 

that  he  would  there  be  made  to  smart  for  his  awk- 
wardness and  the  faults  he  should  commit,  and  so 
he  should  sacrifice  to  God  his  life,  with  its  pleas- 
ures ;  but  that  God  had  disappointed  him,  he  hav- 
ing met  with  nothing  but  satisfaction  in  that 
state.  .  .  . 

"  That  he  had  long  been  troubled  in  mind  from 
a  certain  belief  that  he  should  be  damned ;  that 
all  the  men  in  the  world  could  not  have  per- 
suaded him  to  the  contrary  ;  but  that  he  had  thus 
reasoned  with  himself  about  it :  I  engaged  in  a  re- 
ligious life  only  for  the  love  of  Q-od,  and  I  have  en- 
deavored to  act  only  for  Him ;  whatever  becomes  of 
me,  whether  I  be  lost  or  saved,  I  will  always  con- 
tinue to  act  purely  for  the  love  of  G-od.  I  shall 
have  this  good  at  least,  that  till  death  I  shall  have 
done  all  that  is  in  me  to  love  Sim.  .  .  .  That  since 
then  he  had  passed  his  life  in  perfect  liberty  and 
continual  joy. 

"  That  when  an  occasion  of  practising  some 
virtue  offered,  he  addressed  himself  to  God,  say- 
ing, '  Lord,  I  cannot  do  this  unless  thou  enablest 
me ' ;  and  that  then  he  received  strength  more 
than  sufficient.  That,  when  he  had  failed  in  his 
duty,  he  only  confessed  his  fault,  saying  to  God, 
'I  shall  never  do  otherwise,  if  You  leave  me  to 


TALKS   TO   STUDENTS 

myself:  it  is  You  who  must  hinder  my  failing, 
and  mend  what  is  amiss.'  That  after  this  he  gave 
himself  no  further  uneasiness  about  it. 

"  That  he  had  been  lately  sent  into  Burgundy 
to  buy  the  provision  of  wine  for  the  society,  which 
was  a  very  unwelcome  task  for  him,  because  he 
had  no  turn  for  business,  and  because  he  was 
lame,  and  could  not  go  about  the  boat  but  by 
rolling  himself  over  the  casks.  That,  however,  he 
gave  himself  no  uneasiness  about  it,  nor  about  the 
purchase  of  the  wine.  That  he  said  to  God,  'It 
was  his  business  he  was  about,'  and  that  he  after- 
ward found  it  well  performed.  That  he  had  been 
sent  into  Auvergne,  the  year  before,  upon  the 
same  account ;  that  he  could  not  tell  how  the  mat- 
ter passed,  but  that  it  proved  very  well. 

"  So,  likewise,  in  his  business  in  the  kitchen  (to 
which  he  had  naturally  a  great  aversion),  having 
accustomed  himself  to  do  everything  there  for  the 
love  of  God,  and  with  prayer  upon  all  occasions, 
for  his  grace  to  do  his  work  well,  he  had  found 
everything  easy  during  fifteen  years  that  he  had 
been  employed  there. 

"  That  he  was  very  well  pleased  with  the  post 
he  was  now  in,  but  that  he  was  as  ready  to  quit 
that  as  the  former,  since  he  was  always  pleasing 


CONCLUSION  227 

himself  in  every  condition,  by  doing  little  things 
for  the  love  of  God. 

"That  the  goodness  of  God  assured  him  he 
would  not  forsake  him  utterly,  and  that  he  would 
give  him  strength  to  bear  whatever  evil  he  per- 
mitted to  happen  to  him ;  and,  therefore,  that  he 
feared  nothing,  and  had  no  occasion  to  consult 
with  anybody  about  his  state.  That,  when  he 
had  attempted  to  do  it,  he  had  always  come  away 
more  perplexed." 

The  simple-heartedness  of  the  good  Brother 
Lawrence,  and  the  relaxation  of  all  unnecessary 
solicitudes  and  anxieties  in  him,  is  a  refreshing 
spectacle. 

The  need  of  feeling  responsible  all  the  livelong 
day  has  been  preached  long  enough  in  our  New 
England.  Long  enough  exclusively,  at  any  rate, 
—  and  long  enough  to  the  female  sex.  What  our 
girl-students  and  woman-teachers  most  need  now- 
adays is  not  the  exacerbation,  but  rather  the  ton- 
ing-down  of  their  moral  tensions.  Even  now  I 
fear  that  some  one  of  my  fair  hearers  may  be  mak- 
ing an  undying  resolve  to  become  strenuously  re- 
laxed, cost  what  it  will,  for  the  remainder  of  her 
life.  It  is  needless  to  say  that  that  is  not  the  way 


228  TALKS   TO   STUDENTS 

to  do  it.  The  way  to  do  it,  paradoxical  as  it  may 
seem,  is  genuinely  not  to  care  whether  you  are 
doing  it  or  not.  Then,  possibly,  by  the  grace  of 
God,  you  may  all  at  once  find  that  you  are  doing 
it,  and,  having  learned  what  the  trick  feels  like, 
you  may  (again  by  the  grace  of  God)  be  enabled 
to  go  on. 

And  that  something  like  this  may  be  the  happy 
experience  of  all  my  hearers  is,  in  closing,  my 
most  earnest  wish. 


II. 


OUB  judgments  concerning  the  worth  of  things, 
big  or  little,  depend  on  the  feelings  the  things 
arouse  in  us.  Where  we  judge  a  thing  to  be 
precious  in  consequence  of  the  idea  we  frame  of  it, 
this  is  only  because  the  idea  is  itself  associated 
already  with  a  feeling.  If  we  were  radically  feel- 
ingless,  and  if  ideas  were  the  "only  things  our 
mind  could  entertain,  we  should  lose  all  our  likes 
and  dislikes  at  a  stroke,  and  be  unable  to  point  to 
any  one  situation  or  experience  in  life  more  valu- 
able or  significant  than  any  other. 

Now  the  blindness  in  human  beings,  of  which 
this  discourse  will  treat,  is  the  blindness  with 
which  we  all  are  afflicted  in  regard  to  the  feelings 
of  creatures  and  people  different  from  ourselves. 

We  are  practical  beings,  each  of  us  with  limited 
functions  and  duties  to  perform.  Each  is  bound  to 
feel  intensely  the  importance  of  his  own  duties  and 
the  significance  of  the  situations  that  call  these 


230  TALKS   TO   STUDENTS  % 

forth.  But  this  feeling  is  in  each  of  us  a  vital 
secret,  for  sympathy  with  which  we  vainly  look 
to  others.  The  others  are  too  much  absorbed  in 
their  own  vital  secrets  to  take  an  interest  in  ours. 
Hence  the  stupidity  and  injustice  of  our  opinions, 
so  far  as  they  deal  with  the  significance  of  alien 
lives.  Hence  the  falsity  of  our  judgments,  so  far 
as  they  presume  to  decide  in  an  absolute  way  on 
the  value  of  other  persons'  conditions  or  ideals. 

Take  our  dogs  and  ourselves,  connected  as  we 
are  by  a  tie  more  intimate  than  most  ties  in  this 
world;  and  yet,  outside  of  that  tie  of  friendly  fond- 
ness, how  insensible,  each  of  us,  to  all  that  makes 
life  significant  for  the  other !  —  we  to  the  rapture 
of  bones  under  hedges,  or  smells  of  trees  and 
lamp-posts,  they  to  the  delights  of  literature  and 
art.  As  you  sit  reading  the  most  moving  romance 
you  ever  fell  upon,  what  sort  of  a  judge  is  your 
fox-terrier  of  your  behavior?  With  all  his  good 
will  toward  you,  the  nature  of  your  conduct  is 
absolutely  excluded  from  his  comprehension.  To 
sit  there  like  a  senseless  statue,  when  you  might  be 
taking  him  to  walk  and  throwing  sticks  for  him 
to  catch !  What  queer  disease  is  this  that  comes 
over  you  every  day,  of  holding  things  and  staring 
at  them  like  that  for  hours  together,  paralyzed  of 


WHAT   THE  BLINDNESS   IS  231 

motion  and  vacant  of  all  conscious  life?  The 
African  savages  came  nearer  the  truth ;  but  they, 
too,  missed  it,  when  they  gathered  wonderingly 
round  one  of  our  American  travellers  who,  in  the 
interior,  had  just  come  into  possession  of  a  stray 
copy  of  the  New  York  Commercial  Advertiser,  and 
was  devouring  it  column  by  column.  When  he 
got  through,  they  offered  him  a  high  price  for  the 
mysterious  object ;  and,  being  asked  for  what  they 
wanted  it,  they  said :  "  For  an  eye  medicine,"  — 
that  being  the  only  reason  they  could  conceive  of 
for  the  protracted  bath  which  he  had  given  his 
eyes  upon  its  surface. 

The  spectator's  judgment  is  sure  to  miss  the 
root  of  the  matter,  and  to  possess  no  truth.  The 
subject  judged  knows  a  part  of  the  world  of  reality 
which  the  judging  spectator  fails  to  see,  knows 
more  while  the  spectator  knows  less ;  and,  where- 
ever  there  is  conflict  of  opinion  and  difference  of 
vision,  we  are  bound  to  believe  that  the  truer  side 
is  the  side  that  feels  the  more,  and  not  the  side 
that  feels  the  less. 

Let  me  take  a  personal  example  of  the  kind  that 
befalls  each  one  of  us  daily :  — 

Some  years  ago,  while  journeying  in  the  moun- 
tains of  North  Carolina,  I  passed  by  a  large  num- 


232  TALKS   TO   STUDENTS 

her  of  '  coves,'  as  they  call  them  there,  or  heads 
of  small  valleys  between  the  hills,  which  had  been 
newly  cleared  and  planted.  The  impression  on  my 
mind  was  one  of  unmitigated  squalor.  The  settler 
had  in  every  case  cut  down  the  more  manage- 
able trees,  and  left  their  charred  stumps  standing. 
The  larger  trees  he  had  girdled  and  killed,  in 
order  that  their  foliage  should  not  cast  a  shade. 
He  had  then  built  a  log  cabin,  plastering  its 
chinks  with  clay,  and  had  set  up  a  tall  zigzag  rail 
fence  around  the  scene  of  his  havoc,  to  keep  the 
pigs  and  cattle  out.  Finally,  he  had  irregularly 
planted  the  intervals  between  the  stumps  and 
trees  with  Indian  corn,  which  grew  among  the 
chips;  and  there  he  dwelt  with  his  wife  and 
babes  —  an  axe,  a  gun,  a  few  utensils,  and  some 
pigs  and  chickens  feeding  in  the  woods,  being  the 
sum  total  of  his  possessions. 

The  forest  had  been  destroyed ;  and  what  had 
*  improved '  it  out  of  existence  was  hideous,  a  sort 
of  ulcer,  without  a  single  element  of  artificial 
grace  to  make  up  for  the  loss  of  Nature's  beauty. 
Ugly,  indeed,  seemed  the  life  of  the  squatter, 
scudding,  as  the  sailors  say,  under  bare  poles,  be- 
ginning again  away  back  where  our  first  ancestors 
started,  and  by  hardly  a  single  item  the  better  off 


THE  'COVES*  Eff  THE  SMOKY  MOUNTAINS      233 

for  all  the  achievements  of  the  intervening  genera- 
tions. 

Talk  about  going  back  to  nature !  I  said  to 
myself,  oppressed  by  the  dreariness,  as  I  drove 
by.  Talk  of  a  country  life  for  one's  old  age  and 
for  one's  children !  Never  thus,  with  nothing  but 
the  bare  ground  and  one's  bare  hands  to  fight  the 
battle  !  Never,  without  the  best  spoils  of  culture 
woven  in !  The  beauties  and  commodities  gained 
by  the  centuries  are  sacred.  They  are  our  heri- 
tage and  birthright.  No  modern  person  ought  to 
be  willing  to  live  a  day  in  such  a  state  of  rudir 
mentariness  and  denudation. 

Then  I  said  to  the  mountaineer  who  was  driv- 
ing me,  "  What  sort  of  people  are  they  who  have 
to  make  these  new  clearings  ?  "  "  All  of  us,"  he 
replied.  "  Why,  we  ain't  happy  here,  unless  we  are 
getting  one  of  these  coves  under  cultivation."  I 
instantly  felt  that  I  had  been  losing  the  whole  in- 
ward significance  of  the  situation.  Because  to  me 
the  clearings  spoke  of  naught  but  denudation,  I 
thought  that  to  those  whose  sturdy  arms  and 
obedient  axes  had  made  them  they  could  tell 
no  other  story.  But,  when  they  looked  on  the 
hideous  stumps,  what  they  thought  of  was  personal 
victory.  The  chips,  the  girdled  trees,  and  the  vile 


234  TALKS   TO   STUDENTS 

split  rails  spoke  of  honest  sweat,  persistent  toil  and 
final  reward.  The  cabin  was  a  warrant  of  safety 
for  self  and  wife  and  babes.  In  short,  the  clear- 
ing, which  to  me  was  a  mere  ugly  picture  on  the 
retina,  was  to  them  a  symbol  redolent  with  moral 
memories  and  sang  a  very  paean  of  duty,  struggle, 
and  success. 

I  had  been  as  blind  to  the  peculiar  ideality  of 
their  conditions  as  they  certainly  would  also  have 
been  to  the  ideality  of  mine,  had  they  had  a  peep 
at  my  strange  indoor  academic  ways  of  life  at 
Cambridge. 

Wherever  a  process  of  life  communicates  an 
eagerness  to  him  who  lives  it,  there  the  life 
becomes  genuinely  significant.  Sometimes  the 
eagerness  is  more  knit  up  with  the  motor  activi- 
ties, sometimes  with  the  perceptions,  sometimes 
with  the  imagination,  sometimes  with  reflective 
thought.  But,  wherever  it  is  found,  there  is  the 
zest,  the  tingle,  the  excitement  of  reality;  and 
there  is  '  importance '  in  the  only  real  and  posi- 
tive sense  in  which  importance  ever  anywhere 
can  be. 

Robert  Louis  Stevenson  has  illustrated  this  by 
a  case,  drawn  from  the  sphere  of  the  imagination, 


THE  LANTEKN  BEABERS        235 

in  an  essay  which  I  really  think  deserves  to  be- 
come immortal,  both  for  the  truth  of  its  matter 
and  the  excellence  of  its  form. 

"  Toward  the  end  of  September,"  Stevenson 
writes,  "  when  school-time  was  drawing  near,  and 
the  nights  were  already  black,  we  would  begin  to 
sally  from  our  respective  villas,  each  equipped 
with  a  tin  bull's-eye  lantern.  The  thing  was  so 
well  known  that  it  had  worn  a  rut  in  the  com- 
merce of  Great  Britain;  and  the  grocers,  about 
the  due  time,  began  to  garnish  their  windows  with 
our  particular  brand  of  luminary.  We  wore  them 
buckled  to  the  waist  upon  a  cricket  belt,  and  over 
them,  such  was  the  rigor  of  the  game,  a  buttoned 
top-coat.  They  smelled  noisomely  of  blistered  tin. 
They  never  burned  aright,  though  they  would 
always  burn  our  fingers.  Their  use  was  naught, 
the  pleasure  of  them  merely  fanciful,  and  yet  a 
boy  with  a  bull's-eye  under  his  top-coat  asked  for 
nothing  more.  The  fishermen  used  lanterns  about 
their  boats,  and  it  was  from  them,  I  suppose,  that 
we  had  got  the  hint;  but  theirs  were  not  bull's- 
eyes,  nor  did  we  ever  play  at  being  fishermen. 
The  police  carried  them  at  their  belts,  and  we  had 
plainly  copied  them  in  that ;  yet  we  did  not  pre- 
tend to  be  policemen.  Burglars,  indeed,  we  may 


236  TALKS   TO   STUDENTS 

have  had  some  haunting  thought  of;  and  we  had 
certainly  an  eye  to  past  ages  when  lanterns  were 
more  common,  and  to  certain  story-books  in  which 
we  had  found  them  to  figure  very  largely.  But 
take  it  for  all  in  all,  the  pleasure  of  the  thing  was 
substantive;  and  to  be  a  boy  with  a  bull's-eye 
under  his  top-coat  was  good  enough  for  us. 

"  When  two  of  these  asses  met,  there  would  be 
an  anxious  'Have  you  got  your  lantern?'  and 
a  gratified  '  Yes  ! '  That  was  the  shibboleth,  and 
very  needful,  too;  for,  as  it  was  the  rule  to  keep 
our  glory  contained,  none  could  recognize  a  lan- 
tern-bearer unless  (like  the  polecat)  by  the  smell. 
Four  or  five  would  sometimes  climb  into  the  belly 
of  a  ten-man  lugger,  with  nothing  but  the  thwarts 
above  them, —  for  the  cabin  was  usually  locked, — 
or  chose  out  some  hollow  of  the  links  where  the 
wind  might  whistle  overhead.  Then  the  coats 
would  be  unbuttoned,  and  the  bull's-eyes  dis- 
covered; and  in  the  chequering  glimmer,  under 
the  huge,  windy  hall  of  the  night,  and  cheered  by 
a  rich  steam  of  toasting  tinware,  these  fortunate 
young  gentlemen  would  crouch  together  in  the 
cold  sand  of  the  links,  or  on  the  scaly  bilges  of  the 
fishing-boat,  and  delight  them  with  inappropriate 
talk.  Woe  is  me  that  I  cannot  give  some  speci- 


STEVENSON   QUOTED  237 

mens !  .  .  .  But  the  talk  was  but  a  condiment,  and 
these  gatherings  themselves  only  accidents  in  the 
career  of  the  lantern-bearer.  The  essence  of  this 
bliss  was  to  walk  by  yourself  in  the  black  night, 
the  slide  shut,  the  top-coat  buttoned,  not  a  ray  es- 
caping, whether  to  conduct  your  footsteps  or  to 
make  your  glory  public, —  a  mere  pillar  of  dark- 
ness in  the  dark  ;  and  all  the  while,  deep  down  in 
the  privacy  of  your  fool's  heart,  to  know  you  had 
a  bull's-eye  at  your  belt,  and  to  exult  and  sing 
over  the  knowledge. 

"It  is  said  that  a  poet  has  died  young  in  the 
breast  of  the  most  stolid.  It  may  be  contended 
rather  that  a  (somewhat  minor)  bard  in  almost 
every  case  survives,  and  is  the  spice  of  life  to  his 
possessor.  Justice  is  not  done  to  the  versatility 
and  the  unplumbed  childishness  of  man's  imagi- 
nation. His  life  from  without  may  seem  but  a 
rude  mound  of  mud :  there  will  be  some  golden 
chamber  at  the  heart  of  it,  in  which  he  dwells  de- 
lighted; and  for  as  dark  as  his  pathway  seems 
to  the  observer,  he  will  have  some  kind  of  bull's- 
eye  at  his  belt. 

..."  There  is  one  fable  that  touches  very  near 
the  quick  of  life, —  the  fable  of  the  monk  who 
passed  into  the  woods,  heard  a  bird  break  into 


238  TALKS   TO   STUDENTS 

song,  hearkened  for  a  trill  or  two,  and  found  him- 
self at  his  return  a  stranger  at  his  convent  gates ; 
for  he  had  been  absent  fifty  years,  and  of  all  his 
comrades  there  survived  but  one  to  recognize  him. 
It  is  not  only  in  the  woods  that  this  enchanter 
carols,  though  perhaps  he  is  native  there.  He 
sings  in  the  most  doleful  places.  The  miser  hears 
him  and  chuckles,  and  his  days  are  moments. 
With  no  more  apparatus  than  an  evil-smelling 
lantern,  I  have  evoked  him  on  the  naked  links. 
All  life  that  is  not  merely  mechanical  is  spun  out 
of  two  strands, —  seeking  for  that  bird  and  hearing 
him.  And  it  is  just  this  that  makes  life  so  hard 
to  value,  and  the  delight  of  each  so  incommu- 
nicable. And  it  is  just  a  knowledge  of  this,  and 
a  remembrance  of  those  fortunate  hours  in  which 
the  bird  has  sung  to  MS,  that  fills  us  with  such 
wonder  when  we  turn  to  the  pages  of  the  realist. 
There,  to  be  sure,  we  find  a  picture  of  life  in  so  far 
as  it  consists  of  mud  and  of  old  iron,  cheap  de- 
sires and  cheap  fears,  that  which  we  are  ashamed 
to  remember  and  that  which  we  are  careless 
whether  we  forget ;  but  of  the  note  of  that  time- 
devouring  nightingale  we  hear  no  news. 

..."  Say  that  we  came  [in  such  a  realistic  ro- 
mance] on  some  such  business  as  that  of  my  Ian- 


STEVENSON  QUOTED  239 

tern-bearers  on  the  links,  and  described  the  boys 
as  very  cold,  spat  upon  by  flurries  of  rain,  and 
drearily  surrounded,  all  of  which  they  were  ;  and 
their  talk  as  silly  and  indecent,  which  it  certainly 
was.  To  the  eye  of  the  observer  they  are  wet 
and  cold  and  drearily  surrounded ;  but  ask  them- 
selves, and  they  are  in  the  heaven  of  a  recondite 
pleasure,  the  ground  of  which  is  an  ill-smelling 
lantern. 

"For,  to  repeat,  the  ground  of  a  man's  joy  is 
often  hard  to  hit.  It  may  hinge  at  times  upon  a 
mere  accessory,  like  the  lantern ;  it  may  reside  in 
the  mysterious  inwards  of  psychology.  ...  It  has 
so  little  bond  with  externals  .  .  .  that  it  may  even 
touch  them  not,  and  the  man's  true  life,  for  which 
he  consents  to  live,  lie  altogether  in  the  field  of 
fancy.  ...  In  such  a  case  the  poetry  runs  under- 
ground. The  observer  (poor  soul,  with  his  docu- 
ments !)  is  all  abroad.  For  to  look  at  the  man  is 
but  to  court  deception.  We  shall  see  the  trunk 
from  which  he  draws  his  nourishment;  but  he 
himself  is  above  and  abroad  in  the  green  dome 
of  foliage,  hummed  through  by  winds  and  nested 
in  by  nightingales.  And  the  true  realism  were 
that  of  the  poets,  to  climb  after  him  like  a  squir- 
rel, and  catch  some  glimpse  of  the  heaven  in 


240  TALKS   TO   STUDENTS 

which  he  lives.  And  the  true  realism,  always  and 
everywhere,  is  that  of  the  poets :  to  find  out  where 
joy  resides,  and  give  it  a  voice  far  beyond  singing. 

"  For  to  miss  the  joy  is  to  miss  all.  In  the  joy 
of  the  actors  lies  the  sense  of  any  action.  That  is 
the  explanation,  that  the  excuse.  To  one  who 
has  not  the  secret  of  the  lanterns  the  scene  upon 
the  links  is  meaningless.  And  hence  the  haunt- 
ing and  truly  spectral  unreality  of  realistic  books. 
...  In  each  we  miss  the  personal  poetry,  the  en- 
chanted atmosphere,  that  rainbow  work  of  fancy 
that  clothes  what  is  naked  and  seems  to  ennoble 
what  is  base ;  in  each,  life  falls  dead  like  dough, 
instead  of  soaring  away  like  a  balloon  into  the 
colors  of  the  sunset;  each  is  true,  each  incon- 
ceivable ;  for  no  man  lives  in  the  external  truth 
among  salts  and  acids,  but  in  the  warm,  phantas- 
magoric chamber  of  his  brain,  with  the  painted 
windows  and  the  storied  wall."* 

These  paragraphs  are  the  best  thing  I  know  in 
all  Stevenson.  "  To  miss  the  joy  is  to  miss  all." 
Indeed,  it  is.  Yet  we  are  but  finite,  and  each  one 
of  us  has  some  single  specialized  vocation  of  his 
own.  And  it  seems  as  if  energy  in  the  service  of 
its  particular  duties  might  be  got  only  by  harden- 

*'The  Lantern-bearers,'  in  the  volume  entitled  '  Across  the  Plains.' 
Abridged  in  the  quotation. 


BOYCE   QUOTED  241 

ing  the  heart  toward  everything  unlike  them. 
Our  deadness  toward  all  but  one  particular  kind 
of  joy  would  thus  be  the  price  we  inevitably  have 
to  pay  for  being  practical  creatures.  Only  in 
some  pitiful  dreamer,  some  philosopher,  poet,  or 
romancer,  or  when  the  common  practical  man 
becomes  a  lover,  does  the  hard  externality  give 
way,  and  a  gleam  of  insight  into  the  ejective 
world,  as  Clifford  called  it,  the  vast  world  of  inner 
life  beyond  us,  so  different  from  that  of  outer 
seeming,  illuminate  our  mind.  Then  the  whole 
scheme  of  our  customary  values  gets  confounded, 
then  our  self  is  riven  and  its  narrow  interests  fly 
to  pieces,  then  a  new  centre  and  a  new  perspective 
must  be  found. 

The  change  is  well  described  by  my  colleague, 
Josiah  Royce :  — 

""What,  then,  is  our  neighbor?  Thou  hast  re- 
garded his  thought,  his  feeling,  as  somehow  differ- 
ent from  thine.  Thou  hast  said,  '  A  pain  in  him 
is  not  like  a  pain  in  me,  but  something  far  easier 
to  bear.'  He  seems  to  thee  a  little  less  living 
than  thou ;  his  life  is  dim,  it  is  cold,  it  is  a  pale  fire 
beside  thy  own  burning  desires.  .  .  .  So,  dimly  and 
by  instinct  hast  thou  lived  with  thy  neighbor,  and 
hast  known  him  not,  being  blind.  Thou  hast  made 


242  TALKS   TO   STUDENTS 

[of  him]  a  thing,  no  Self  at  all.  Have  done  with 
this  illusion,  and  simply  try  to  learn  the  truth. 
Pain  is  pain,  joy  is  joy,  everywhere,  even  as  in  thee. 
In  all  the  songs  of  the  forest  birds ;  in  all  the  cries 
of  the  wounded  and  dying,  struggling  in  the  cap- 
tor's power ;  in  the  boundless  sea  where  the  myr- 
iads of  water-creatures  strive  and  die;  amid  all 
the  countless  hordes  of  savage  men;  in  all  sick- 
ness and  sorrow;  in  all  exultation  and  hope, 
everywhere,  from  the  lowest  to  the  noblest,  the 
same  conscious,  burning,  wilful  life  is  found,  end- 
lessly manifold  as  the  forms  of  the  living  creatures, 
unquenchable  as  the  fires  of  the  sun,  real  as  these 
impulses  that  even  now  throb  in  thine  own  little 
selfish  heart.  Lift  up  thy  eyes,  behold  that  life, 
and  then  turn  away,  and  forget  it  as  thou  canst ; 
but,  if  thou  hast  known  that,  thou  hast  begun  to 
know  thy  duty."* 

This  higher  vision  of  an  inner  significance  in 
what,  until  then,  we  had  realized  only  in  the  dead 
external  way,  often  comes  over  a  person  suddenly; 
and,  when  it  does  so,  it  makes  an  epoch  in  his  his- 
tory. As  Emerson  says,  there  is  a  depth  in  those 
moments  that  constrains  us  to  ascribe  more  reality 

•  The  Religious  Aspect  of  Philosophy,  pp.  157-162  (abridged). 


OBERMANN   QUOTED  243 

to  them  than  to  all  other  experiences.  The  pas- 
sion of  love  will  shake  one  like  an  explosion,  or 
some  act  mil  awaken  a  remorseful  compunction 
that  hangs  like  a  cloud  over  all  one's  later  day. 

This  mystic  sense  of  hidden  meaning  starts 
upon  us  often  from  non-human  natural  things. 
I  take  this  passage  from  Obennann,  a  French 
novel  that  had  some  vogue  in  its  day  :  "  Paris, 
March  7. —  It  was  dark  and  rather  cold.  I  was 
gloomy,  and  walked  because  1  had  nothing  to  do. 
I  passed  by  some  flowers  placed  breast-high  upon 
a  wall.  A  jonquil  in  bloom  was  there.  It  is  the 
strongest  expression  of  desire :  it  was  the  first  per- 
fume of  the  year.  I  felt  all  the  happiness  destined 
for  man.  This  unutterable  harmony  of  souls,  the 
phantom  of  the  ideal  world,  arose  in  me  complete. 
I  never  felt  anything  so  great  or  so  instantaneous. 
I  know  not  what  shape,  what  analogy,  what  secret 
of  relation  it  was  that  made  me  see  in  this  flower 
a  limitless  beauty.  ...  I  shall  never  enclose  in 
a  conception  this  power,  this  immensity  that  noth- 
ing will  express ;  this  form  that  nothing  will  con- 
tain ;  this  ideal  of  a  better  world  which  one  feels, 
but  which  it  would  seem  that  nature  has  not 
made."  * 

•De  Senancour:  Obermann,  Lettre  XXX. 


244  TALKS  TO  STUDENTS 

Wordsworth  and  Shelley  are  similarly  full  of 
this  sense  of  a  limitless  significance  in  natural 
things.  In  Wordsworth  it  was  a  somewhat  aus- 
tere and  moral  significance, —  a  'lonely  cheer.' 

"  To  every  natural  form,  rock,  fruit,  or  flower, 
Even  the  loose  stones  that  cover  the  highway, 
I  gave  a  moral  life :  I  saw  them  feel 
Or  linked  them  to  some  feeling :  the  great  mass 
Lay  bedded  in  some  quickening  soul,  and  all 
That  I  beheld  respired  with  inward  meaning."  * 

"  Authentic  tidings  of  invisible  things !  "  Just 
what  this  hidden  presence  in  nature  was,  which 
Wordsworth  so  rapturously  felt,  and  in  the  light 
of  which  he  lived,  tramping  the  hills  for  days 
together,  the  poet  never  could  explain  logically  or 
in  articulate  conceptions.  Yet  to  the  reader  who 
may  himself  have  had  gleaming  moments  of  a 
similar  sort  the  verses  in  which  Wordsworth 
simply  proclaims  the  fact  of  them  come  with  a 
heart-satisfying  authority :  — 

"  Magnificent 

The  morning  rose,  in  memorable  pomp, 
Glorious  as  ere  I  had  beheld.  In  front 
The  sea  lay  laughing  at  a  distance ;  near 

*  The  Prelude,  Book  III. 


WORDSWORTH'S  INNER  LIFE  245 

The  solid  mountains  shone,  bright  as  the  clouds, 
Grain-tinctured,  drenched  in  empyrean  light ; 
And  in  the  meadows  and  the  lower  grounds 
Was  all  the  sweetness  of  a  common  dawn, — 
Dews,  vapors,  and  the  melody  of  birds, 
And  laborers  going  forth  to  till  the  fields." 

"  Ah  1  need  I  say,  dear  Friend,  that  to  the  brim 
My  heart  was  full ;  I  made  no  vows,  but  vows 
Were  then  made  for  me ;  bond  unknown  to  me 
Was  given,  that  I  should  be,  else  sinning  greatly, 
A  dedicated  Spirit.    On  I  walked, 
In  thankful  blessedness,  which  yet  survives."  * 

As  Wordsworth  walked,  filled  with  his  strange 
inner  joy,  responsive  thus  to  the  secret  life  of 
nature  round  about  him,  his  rural  neighbors, 
tightly  and  narrowly  intent  upon  their  own  affairs, 
their  crops  and  lambs  and  fences,  must  have 
thought  him  a  very  insignificant  and  foolish  per- 
sonage. It  surely  never  occurred  to  any  one  of 
them  to  wonder  what  was  going  on  inside  of  him 
or  what  it  might  be  worth.  And  yet  that  inner 
life  of  his  carried  the  burden  of  a  significance  that 
has  fed  the  souls  of  others,  and  fills  them  to  this 
day  with  inner  joy. 

Richard  Jefferies  has  written  a  remarkable  auto- 

*The  Prelude,  Book  IV. 


246  TALKS  TO   STUDENTS 

biographic  document  entitled  The  Story  of  my 
Heart.  It  tells,  in  many  pages,  of  the  rapture 
with  which  in  youth  the  sense  of  the  life  of  nature 
filled  him.  On  a  certain  hill-top,  he  says :  — 

"  I  was  utterly  alone  with  the  sun  and  the  earth. 
Lying  down  on  the  grass,  I  spoke  in  my  soul  to 
the  earth,  the  sun,  the  air,  and  the  distant  sea,  far 
beyond  slgnk  . .  .  With  all  the  intensity  of  feeling 
which  exalted  me,  all  the  intense  communion 
I  held  with  the  earth,  the  sun  and  sky,  the  stars 
hidden  by  the  light,  with  the  ocean, — in  no  man- 
ner can  the  thrilling  depth  of  these  feelings  be 
written, —  with  these  I  prayed  as  if  they  were  the 
keys  of  an  instrument. .  .  .  The  great  sun,  burning 
with  light,  the  strong  earth, —  dear  earth, —  the 
warm  sky,  the  pure  air,  the  thought  of  ocean, 
the  inexpressible  beauty  of  all  filled  me  with 
a  rapture,  an  ecstasy,  an  inflatus.  With  this  in- 
flatus,  too,  I  prayed.  .  .  .  The  prayer,  this  soul- 
emotion,  was  in  itself,  not  for  an  object :  it  was 
a  passion.  I  hid  my  face  in  the  grass.  I  was 
wholly  prostrated,  I  lost  myself  in  the  wrestle, 
I  was  rapt  and  carried  away.  .  .  .  Had  any  shep- 
herd accidently  seen  me  lying  on  the  turf,  he 
would  only  have  thought  I  was  resting  a  few 
minutes.  I  made  no  outward  show.  Who  could 


BICHAUD   JEFFERIE6  QUOTED  247 

have  imagined  the  whirlwind  of  passion  that  was 
going  on  in  me  as  I  reclined  there !  "  * 

Surely,  a  worthless  hour  of  life,  when  measured 
by  the  usual  standards  of  commercial  value.  Yet 
in  what  other  kind  of  value  can  the  preciousness 
of  any  hour,  made  precious  by  any  standard, 
consist,  if  it  consist  not  in  feelings  of  excited  sig- 
nificance like  these,  engendered  in  some  one,  by 
what  the  hour  contains  ? 

Yet  so  blind  and  dead  does  the  clamor  of  our 
own  practical  interests  make  us  to  all  other  things, 
that  it  seems  almost  as  if  it  were  necessary  to  be- 
come worthless  as  a  practical  being,  if  one  is  to 
hope  to  attain  to  any  breadth  of  insight  into  the 
impersonal  world  of  worths  as  such,  to  have  any 
perception  of  life's  meaning  on  a  large  objective 
scale.  Only  your  mystic,  your  dreamer,  or  your 
insolvent  tramp  or  loafer,  can  afford  so  sympa- 
thetic an  occupation,  an  occupation  which  will 
change  the  usual  standards  of  human  value  in  the 
twinkling  of  an  eye,  giving  to  foolishness  a  place 
ahead  of  power,  and  laying  low  in  a  minute  the 
distinctions  which  it  takes  a  hard-working  con- 
ventional man  a  lifetime  to  build  up.  You  may 
be  a  prophet,  at  this  rate ;  but  you  cannot  be  a 
worldly  success. 

*  Op.  dt. ,  Boston,  Roberts,  1883,  pp.  6,  6. 


248  TALKS   TO   STUDENTS 

Walt  Whitman,  for  instance,  is  accounted  by 
many  of  us  a  contemporary  prophet.  He  abolishes 
the  usual  human  distinctions,  brings  all  con- 
ventionalisms into  solution,  and  loves  and  cele- 
brates hardly  any  human  attributes  save  those 
elementary  ones  common  to  all  members  of  the 
race.  For  this  he  becomes  a  sort  of  ideal  tramp, 
a  rider  on  omnibus-tops  and  ferry-boats,  and, 
considered  either  practically  or  academically,  a 
worthless,  unproductive  being.  His  verses  are 
but  ejaculations  —  things  mostly  without  subject 
or  verb,  a  succession  of  interjections  on  an  im- 
mense scale.  He  felt  the  human  crowd  as  raptur- 
ously as  Wordsworth  felt  the  mountains,  felt  it  as 
an  overpoweringly  significant  presence,  simply  to 
absorb  one's  mind  in  which  should  be  business 
sufficient  and  worthy  to  fill  the  days  of  a  serious 
man.  As  he  crosses  Brooklyn  ferry,  this  is  what 
he  feels-:  — 

Flood-tide  below  me !    I  watch  you,  face  to  face ; 

Clouds  of  the  west!  sun  there  half  an  hoar  high!  I  see 
you  also  face  to  face. 

Crowds  of  men  and  women  attired  in  the  usual  costumes  t 
how  curious  you  are  to  me  I 

On  the  ferry-boats,  the  hundreds  and  hundreds  that  cross, 
returning  home,  are  more  curious  to  me  than  you  sup- 
pose; 


WALT   WHITMAN  QUOTED  249 

And  you  that  shall  cross  from  shore  to  shore  years  hence, 

are  more  to  me,  and  more  in  my  meditations,  than  you 

might  suppose. 
Others  will  enter  the  gates  of  the  ferry,  and  cross  from 

shore  to  shore ;  • 

Others  will  watch  the  run  of  the  flood-tide ; 
Others  will  see  the  shipping  of  Manhattan  north  and  west, 

and  the  heights  of  Brooklyn  to  the  south  and  east ; 
Others  will  see  the  islands  large  and  small ; 
Fifty  years  hence,  others  will  see  them  as  they  cross,  the  sun 

half  an  hour  high. 
A  hundred  years  hence,  or  ever  so  many  hundred  years 

hence,  others  will  see  them, 
Will  enjoy  the  sunset,  the  pouring  in  of  the  flood-tide,  the 

falling  back  to  the  sea  of  the  ebb-tide. 
It  avails  not,  neither  time  or  place  —  distance  avails  not. 
Just  as  you  feel  when  you  look  on  the  river  and  sky,  so  I 

felt; 
Just  as  any  of  you  is  one  of  a  living  crowd,  I  was  one  of  a 

crowd ; 
Just  as  you  are  refreshed  by  the  gladness  of  the  river  and 

the  bright  flow,  I  was  refresh'd ; 
Just  as  you  stand  and  lean  on  the  rail,  yet  hurry  with  the 

swift  current,  I  stood,  yet  was  hurried ; 
Just  as  you  look  on  the  numberless  masts  of  ships,  and  the 

thick-stemmed  pipes  of  steamboats,  I  looked. 
I  too  many  and  many  a  time  cross'd  the  river,  the  sun  half 

an  hour  high ; 
I  watched  the  Twelfth-month  sea-gulls  —  I  saw  them  high  in 

the  air,  with  motionless  wings,  oscillating  their  bodies, 


250  TALKS   TO  STUDENTS 

I  saw  how  the  glistening  yellow  lit  up  parts  of  their  bodies, 
and  left  the  rest  in  strong  shadow, 

I  saw  the  slow-wheeling  circles,  and  the  gradual  edging 
toward  the  south. 

Saw  the  white  sails  of  schooners  and  sloops,  saw  the  ships  at 
anchor, 

The  sailors  at  work  in  the  rigging,  or  out  astride  the  spars ; 

The  scallop-edged  wares  in  the  twilight,  the  ladled  cups,  the 
frolicsome  crests  and  glistening ; 

The  stretch  afar  growing  dimmer  and  dimmer,  the  gray 
walls  of  the  granite  store-houses  by  the  docks ; 

On  the  neighboring  shore,  the  fires  from  the  foundry  chim- 
neys burning  high  ....  into  the  night, 

Casting  their  flicker  of  black  ....  into  the  clefts  of  streets. 

These,  and  all  else,  were  to  me  the  same  as  they  are  to  you.* 

And  so  on,  through  the  rest  of  a  divinely  beau- 
tiful poem.  And,  if  you  wish  to  see  what  this 
hoary  loafer  considered  the  most  worthy  way  of 
profiting  by  life's  heaven-sent  opportunities,  read 
the  delicious  volume  of  his  letters  to  a  young  car- 
conductor  who  had  become  his  friend :  — 


"NEW  YORK,  Oct.  9, 1868. 

"  Dear  Pete, —  It  is  splendid  here  this  forenoon 
—  bright  and  cool.     I  was  out  early  taking  a  short 

• '  Crossing  Brooklyn  Ferry '  (abridged). 


WALT  WHITMAN  QUOTED  251 

walk  by  the  river  only  two  squares  from  where  I 
live.  .  .  .  Shall  I  tell  you  about  [my  life]  just  to 
fill  up?  I  generally  spend  the  forenoon  in  my 
room  writing,  etc.,  then  take  a  bath  fix  up  and 
go  out  about  twelve  and  loafe  somewhere  or  call 
on  someone  down  town  or  on  business,  or  per- 
haps if  it  is  very  pleasant  and  I  feel  like  it  ride 
a  trip  with  some  driver  friend  on  Broadway  from 
23rd  Street  to  Bowling  Green,  three  miles  each 
way.  (Every  day  I  find  I  have  plenty  to  do, 
every  hour  is  occupied  with  something.)  You 
know  it  is  a  never  ending  amusement  and  study 
and  recreation  for  me  to  ride  a  couple  of  hours 
on  a  pleasant  afternoon  on  a  Broadway  stage  in 
this  way.  You  see  everything  as  you  pass,  a  sort 
of  living,  endless  panorama  —  shops  and  splendid 
buildings  and  great  windows :  on  the  broad  side- 
walks crowds  of  women  richly  dressed  continually 
passing,  altogether  different,  superior  in  style  and 
looks  from  any  to  be  seen  anywhere  else  —  in  fact 
a  perfect  stream  of  people  — men  too  dressed  in 
high  style,  and  plenty  of  foreigners  —  and  then  in 
the  streets  the  thick  crowd  of  carriages,  stages, 
carts,  hotel  and  private  coaches,  and  in  fact  all 
sorts  of  vehicles  and  many  first  class  teams,  mile 
after  mile,  and  the  splendor  of  such  a  great  street 


252  TALKS   TO   STUDENTS 

and  so  many  tall,  ornamental,  noble  buildings 
many  of  them  of  white  marble,  and  the  gayety  and 
motion  on  every  side :  you  will  not  wonder  how 
much  attraction  all  this  is  on  a  fine  day,  to  a  great 
loafer  like  me,  who  enjoys  so  much  seeing  the 
busy  world  move  by  him,  and  exhibiting  itself  for 
his  amusement,  while  he  takes  it  easy  and  just 
looks  on  and  observes."  * 

Truly  a  futile  way  of  passing  the  time,  some  of 
you  may  say,  and  not  altogether  creditable  to  a 
grown-up  man.  And  yet,  from  the  deepest  point 
of  view,  who  knows  the  more  of  truth,  and  who 
knows  the  less, —  Whitman  on  his  omnibus-top, 
full  of  the  inner  joy  with  which  the  spectacle  in- 
spires him,  or  you,  full  of  the  disdain  which  the 
futility  of  his  occupation  excites  ? 

When  your  ordinary  Brooklynite  or  New  Yorker, 
leading  a  life  replete  with  too  much  luxury,  or  tired 
and  careworn  about  his  personal  affairs,  crosses 
the  ferry  or  goes  up  Broadway,  his  fancy  does 
not  thus  *  soar  away  into  the  colors  of  the  sunset ' 
as  did  Whitman's,  nor  does  he  inwardly  realize  at 
all  the  indisputable  fact  that  this  world  never  did 
anywhere  or  at  any  time  contain  more  of  essential 
divinity,  or  of  eternal  meaning,  than  is  embodied 

*  Calamus,  Boston,  1397,  pp.  41,  42. 


CARLYLE  AND  SCHOPENHAUER      253 

in  the  fields  of  vision  over  which  his  eyes  so  care- 
lessly pass.  There  is  life ;  and  there,  a  step  away, 
is  death.  There  is  the  only  kind  of  beauty  there 
ever  was.  There  is  the  old  human  struggle  and 
its  fruits  together.  There  is  the  text  and  the  ser- 
mon, the  real  and  the  ideal  in  one.  But  to  the 
jaded  and  unquickened  eye  it  is  all  dead  and 
common,  pure  vulgarism,  flatness,  and  disgust. 
"  Hech !  it  is  a  sad  sight ! "  says  Carlyle,  walking 
at  night  with  some  one  who  appeals  to  him  to  note 
the  splendor  of  the  stars.  And  that  very  repeti- 
tion of  the  scene  to  new  generations  of  men  in 
secula  seculorum,  that  eternal  recurrence  of  the 
common  order,  which  so  fills  a  Whitman  with 
mystic  satisfaction,  is  to  a  Schopenhauer,  with  the 
emotional  anaesthesia,  the  feeling  of  *  awful  inner 
emptiness '  from  out  of  which  he  views  it  all,  the 
chief  ingredient  of  the  tedium  it  instils.  What  is 
life  on  the  largest  scale,  he  asks,  but  the  same 
recurrent  inanities,  the  same  dog  barking,  the 
same  fly  buzzing,  forevennore  ?  Y"et  of  the  kind 
of  fibre  of  which  such  inanities  consist  is  the 
material  woven  of  all  the  excitements,  joys,  and 
meanings  that  ever  were,  or  ever  shall  be,  in  this 
world. 

To  be  rapt  with  satisfied  attention,  like  Whit- 


254  TALKS   TO   STUDENTS 

man,  to  the  mere  spectacle  of  the  world's  presence, 
is  one  way,  and  the  most  fundamental  way,  of 
confessing  one's  sense  of  its  unfathomable  signifi- 
cance and  importance.  But  how  can  one  attain 
to  the  feeling  of  the  vital  significance  of  an  ex- 
perience, if  one  have  it  not  to  begin  with  ?  There 
is  no  receipt  which  one  can  follow.  Being  a 
secret  and  a  mystery,  it  often  comes  in  mysteri- 
ously unexpected  ways.  It  blossoms  sometimes 
from  out  of  the  very  grave  wherein  we  imagined 
that  our  happiness  was  buried.  Benvenuto  Cel- 
lini, after  a  life  all  in  the  outer  sunshine,  made 
of  adventures  and  artistic  excitements,  suddenly 
finds  himself  cast  into  a  dungeon  in  the  Castle 
of  San  Angelo.  The  place  is  horrible.  Rats  and 
wet  and  mould  possess  it.  His  leg  is  broken  and 
his  teeth  fall  out,  apparently  with  scurvy.  But 
his  thoughts  turn  to  God  as  they  have  never 
turned  before.  He  gets  a  Bible,  which  he  reads 
during  the  one  hour  in  the  twenty-four  in  which 
a  wandering  ray  of  daylight  penetrates  his  cavern. 
He  has  religious  visions.  He  sings  psalms  to  him- 
self, and  composes  hymns.  And  thinking,  on  the 
last  day  of  July,  of  the  festivities  customary  on 
the  morrow  in  Rome,  he  says  to  himself :  "  All 
these  past  years  I  celebrated  this  holiday  with  the 


BENVENT7TO   CELLINI   A.ND   TOLSTOI         255 

vanities  of  the  world:  from  this  year  hencefor- 
ward I  will  do  it  with  the  divinity  of  God.  And 
then  I  said  to  myself, '  Oh,  how  much  more  happy 
I  am  for  this  present  life  of  mine  than  for  all  those 
things  remembered  ! '  "  * 

But  the  great  understander  of  these  mysterious 
ebbs  and  flows  is  Tolstoi.  They  throb  all  through 
hia  novels.  In  his  '  War  and  Peace,'  the  hero, 
Peter,  is  supposed  to  be  the  richest  man  in  the 
Russian  empire.  During  the  French  invasion  he 
is  taken  prisoner,  and  dragged  through  much  of 
the  retreat.  Cold,  vermin,  hunger,  and  every 
form  of  misery  assail  him,  the  result  being  a  reve- 
lation to  him  of  the  real  scale  of  life's  values. 
"  Here  only,  and  for  the  first  time,  he  appreciated, 
because  he  was  deprived  of  it,  the  happiness  of 
eating  when  he  was  hungry,  of  drinking  when 
he  was  thirsty,  of  sleeping  when  he  was  sleepy, 
and  of  talking  when  he  felt  the  desire  to  exchange 
some  words.  .  .  .  Later  in  life  he  always  recurred 
with  joy  to  this  month  of  captivity,  and  never 
failed  to  speak  with  enthusiasm  of  the  powerful 
and  ineffaceable  sensations,  and  especially  of  the 
moral  calm  which  he  had  experienced  at  this 
epoch.  When  at  daybreak,  on  the  morrow  of  his 

•Vita,  lib.  2,  chap.  iv. 


256  TALKS   TO   STUDENTS 

imprisonment,  he  saw  [I  abridge  here  Tolstoi's 
description]  the  mountains  with  their  wooded 
slopes  disappearing  in  the  grayish  mist;  when 
he  felt  the  cool  breeze  caress  him;  when  he 
saw  the  light  drive  away  the  vapors,  and  the 
sun  rise  majestically  behind  the  clouds  and  cu- 
polas, and  the  crosses,  the  dew,  the  distance,  the 
river,  sparkle  in  the  splendid,  cheerful  rays, —  his 
heart  overflowed  with  emotion.  This  emotion 
kept  continually  with  him,  and  increased  a  hun- 
dred-fold as  the  difficulties  of  his  situation  grew 
graver.  ...  He  learnt  that  man  is  meant  for 
happiness,  and  that  this  happiness  is  in  him,  in 
the  satisfaction  of  the  daily  needs  of  existence, 
and  that  unhappiness  is  the  fatal  result,  not  of 
our  need,  but  of  our  abundance.  .  .  .  When  calm 
reigned  in  the  camp,  and  the  embers  paled,  and 
little  by  little  went  out,  the  full  moon  had  reached 
the  zenith.  The  woods  and  the  fields  roundabout 
lay  clearly  visible ;  and,  beyond  the  inundation  of 
light  which  filled  them,  the  view  plunged  into  the 
limitless  horizon.  Then  Peter  cast  his  eyes  upon 
the  firmament,  filled  at  that  hour  with  myriads  of 
stars.  '  All  that  is  mine,'  he  thought.  '  All  that 
is  in  me,  is  me  !  And  that  is  what  they  think  they 
have  taken  prisoner!  That  is  what  they  have 


EMERSON   AND   NATURE  257 

shut  up  in  a  cabin ! '  So  he  smiled,  and  turned  in 
to  sleep  among  his  comrades."  * 

The  occasion  and  the  experience,  then,  are 
nothing.  It  all  depends  on  the  capacity  of  the 
soul  to  be  grasped,  to  have  its  life-currents  ab- 
sorbed by  what  is  given.  "  Crossing  a  bare  com- 
mon," says  Emerson,  "in  snow  puddles,  at  twi- 
light, under  a  clouded  sky,  without  having  in  my 
thoughts  any  occurrence  of  special  good  fortune, 
I  have  enjoyed  a  perfect  exhilaration.  I  am 
glad  to  the  brink  of  fear." 

Life  is  always  worth  living,  if  one  have  such 
responsive  sensibilities.  But  we  of  the  highly 
educated  classes  (so  called)  have  most  of  us  got 
far,  far  away  from  Nature.  We  are  trained  to 
seek  the  choice,  the  rare,  the  exquisite  exclu- 
sively, and  to  overlook  the  common.  We  are 
stuffed  with  abstract  conceptions,  and  glib  with 
verbalities  and  verbosities ;  and  in  the  culture  of 
these  higher  functions  the  peculiar  sources  of  joy 
connected  with  our  simpler  functions  often  dry  up, 
and  we  grow  stone-blind  and  insensible  to  life's 
more  elementary  and  general  goods  and  joys. 

The  remedy  under  such  conditions  is  to  descend 
to  a  more  profound  and  primitive  level.  To  be 

•La  Guerre  et  la  Paix,  Paris,  1884,  vol.  iii.  pp.  268,  275,  316. 


258  TALKS   TO   STUDENTS 

imprisoned  or  shipwrecked  or  forced  into  the 
army  would  permanently  show  the  good  of  life 
to  many  an  over-educated  pessimist.  Living  in 
the  open  air  and  on  the  ground,  the  lop-sided 
beam  of  the  balance  slowly  rises  to  the  level  line ; 
and  the  over-sensibilities  and  insensibilities  even 
themselves  out.  The  good  of  all  the  artificial 
schemes  and  fevers  fades  and  pales;  and  that  of 
seeing,  smelling,  tasting,  sleeping,  and  daring  and 
doing  with  one's  body,  grows  and  grows.  The 
savages  and  children  of  nature,  to  whom  we  deem 
ourselves  so  much  superior,  certainly  are  alive 
where  we  are  often  dead,  along  these  lines ;  and, 
could  they  write  as  glibly  as  we  do,  they  would 
read  us  impressive  lectures  on  our  impatience  for 
improvement  and  on  our  blindness  to  the  funda- 
mental static  goods  of  life.  "Ah!  my  brother," 
said  a  chieftain  to  his  white  guest,  "thou  wilt 
never  know  the  happiness  of  both  thinking  of 
nothing  and  doing  nothing.  This,  next  to  sleep, 
is  the  most  enchanting  of  all  things.  Thus  we 
were  before  our  birth,  and  thus  we  shall  be  after 
death.  Thy  people,  .  .  .  when  they  have  finished 
reaping  one  field,  they  begin  to  plough  another; 
and,  if  the  day  were  not  enough,  I  have  seen 
them  plough  by  moonlight.  What  is  their  life  to 


THE   NON-THINKING   LEVEL  259 

ours, —  the  life  that  is  as  naught  to  them  ?  Blind 
that  they  are,  they  lose  it  all !  But  we  live  in  the 
present,"  * 

The  intense  interest  that  life  can  assume  when 
brought  down  to  the  non-thinking  level,  the 
level  of  pure  sensorial  perception,  has  been  beau- 
tifully described  by  a  man  who  can  write,—  Mr. 
W.  H.  Hudson,  in  his  volume,  "Idle  Days  in 
Patagonia." 

"  I  spent  the  greater  part  of  one  winter,"  says 
this  admirable  author,  "at  a  point  on  the  Rio 
Negro,  seventy  or  eighty  miles  from  the  sea. 

...  "It  was  my  custom  to  go  out  every  morn- 
ing on  horseback  with  my  gun,  and,  followed  by 
one  dog,  to  ride  away  from  the  valley;  and  no 
sooner  would  I  climb  the  terrace,  and  plunge  into 
the  gray,  universal  thicket,  than  I  would  find 
myself  as  completely  alone  as  if  five  hundred  in- 
stead of  only  five  miles  separated  me  from  the 
valley  and  river.  So  wild  and  solitary  and  re- 
mote seemed  that  gray  waste,  stretching  away 
into  infinitude,  a  waste  untrodden  by  man,  and 
where  the  wild  animals  are  so  few  that  they 
have  made  no  discoverable  path  in  the  wilder- 
ness of  thorns.  .  .  .  Not  once  nor  twice  nor 

*  Quoted  by  Lotze,  Microcosmus,  English  translation,  vol.  ii.  p.  240. 


260  TALKS   TO   STUDENTS 

thrice,  but  day  after  day  I  returned  to  this  soli- 
tude, going  to  it  in  the  morning  as  if  to  attend 
a  festival,  and  leaving  it  only  when  hunger  and 
thirst  and  the  westering  sun  compelled  me. 
And  yet  I  had  no  object  in  going, —  no  motive 
which  could  be  put  into  words;  for,  although  I 
carried  a  gun,  there  was  nothing  to  shoot, —  the 
shooting  was  all  left  behind  in  the  valley.  .  .  . 
Sometimes  I  would  pass  a  whole  day  without 
seeing  one  mammal,  and  perhaps  not  more  than 
a  dozen  birds  of  any  size.  The  weather  at  that 
time  was  cheerless,  generally  with  a  gray  film  of 
cloud  spread  over  the  sky,  and  a  bleak  wind, 
often  cold  enough  to  make  my  bridle-hand  quite 
numb.  .  .  .  At  a  slow  pace,  which  would  have 
seemed  intolerable  under  other  circumstances,  I 
would  ride  about  for  hours  together  at  a  stretch. 
On  arriving  at  a  hill,  I  would  slowly  ride  to  its 
summit,  and  stand  there  to  survey  the  prospect. 
On  every  side  it  stretched  away  in  great  undu- 
lations, wild  and  irregular.  How  gray  it  all 
was !  Hardly  less  so  near  at  hand  than  on  the 
haze-wrapped  horizon  where  the  hills  were  dim 
and  the  outline  obscured  by  distance.  Descend- 
ing from  my  outlook,  I  would  take  up  my  aim- 
less wanderings  again,  and  visit  other  elevations 


THE  PATAGONIAN   WILDERNESS  261 

to  gaze  on  the  same  landscape  from  another 
point;  and  so  on  for  hours.  And  at  noon  I 
would  dismount,  and  sit  or  lie  on  my  folded 
poncho  for  an  hour  or  longer.  One  day  in  these 
rambles  I  discovered  a  small  grove  composed  of 
twenty  or  thirty  trees,  growing  at  a  convenient 
distance  apart,  that  had  evidently  been  resorted 
to  by  a  herd  of  deer  or  other  wild  animals.  This 
grove  was  on  a  hill  differing  in  shape  from  other 
hills  in  its  neighborhood;  and,  after  a  time,  I 
made  a  point  of  finding  and  using  it  as  a  rest- 
ing-place every  day  at  noon.  I  did  not  ask 
myself  why  I  made  choice  of  that  one  spot, 
sometimes  going  out  of  my  way  to  sit  there, 
instead  of  sitting  down  under  any  one  of  the  mill- 
ions of  trees  and  bushes  on  any  other  hillside. 
I  thought  nothing  about  it,  but  acted  uncon- 
sciously. Only  afterward  it  seemed  to  me  that, 
after  having  rested  there  once,  each  time  I 
wished  to  rest  again,  the  wish  came  associated 
with  the  image  of  that  particular  clump  of  trees, 
with  polished  stems  and  clean  bed  of  sand  be- 
neath; and  in  a  short  time  I  formed  a  habit  of 
returning,  animal  like,  to  repose  at  that  same 
spot. 

"  It  was,  perhaps,  a  mistake  to  say  that  I  would 


262  TALKS  TO  STUDENTS 

sit  down  and  rest,  since  I  was  never  tired ;  and 
yet,  without  being  tired,  that  noon-day  pause,  dur- 
ing which  I  sat  for  an  hour  without  moving,  was 
strangely  grateful.  All  day  there  would  be  no 
sound,  not  even  the  rustling  of  a  leaf.  One  day, 
while  listening  to  the  silence,  it  occurred  to  my 
mind  to  wonder  what  the  effect  would  be  if  I 
were  to  shout  aloud.  This  seemed  at  the  time  a 
horrible  suggestion,  which  almost  made  me  shud- 
der. But  during  those  solitary  days  it  was  a  rare 
thing  for  any  thought  to  cross  my  mind.  In  the 
state  of  mind  I  was  in,  thought  had  become  im- 
possible. My  state  was  one  of  suspense  and  watch- 
fulness ;  yet  I  had  no  expectation  of  meeting  an 
adventure,  and  felt  as  free  from  apprehension  as 
I  feel  now  while  sitting  in  a  room  in  London. 
The  state  seemed  familiar  rather  than  strange, 
and  accompanied  by  a  strong  feeling  of  elation ; 
and  I  did  not  know  that  something  had  come  be- 
tween me  and  my  intellect  until  I  returned  to  my 
former  self, —  to  thinking,  and  the  old  insipid  ex- 
istence [again]. 

"  I  had  undoubtedly  gone  back ;  and  that  state 
of  intense  watchfulness  or  alertness,  rather,  with 
suspension  of  the  higher  intellectual  faculties,  re- 
presented the  mental  state  of  the  pure  savage.  He 


FELICITY   OF   THE   SENSOEIAL   LIFE 

thinks  little,  reasons  little,  having  a  surer  guide 
in  his  [mere  sensory  perceptions].  He  is  in  perfect 
harmony  with  nature,  and  is  nearly  on  a  level, 
mentally,  with  the  wild  animals  he  preys  on,  and 
which  in  their  turn  sometimes  prey  on  him."  * 

For  the  spectator,  such  hours  as  Mr.  Hudson 
writes  of  form  a  mere  tale  of  emptiness,  in  which 
nothing  happens,  nothing  is  gained,  and  there  is 
nothing  to  describe.  They  are  meaningless  and 
vacant  tracts  of  time.  To  him  who  feels  their 
inner  secret,  they  tingle  with  an  importance  that 
unutterably  vouches  for  itself.  I  am  sorry  for  the 
boy  or  girl,  or  man  or  woman,  who  has  never  been 
touched  by  the  spell  of  this  mysterious  sensorjal 
life,  with  its  irrationality,  if  so  you  like  to  call  it, 
but  its  vigilance  and  its  supreme  felicity.  The 
holidays  of  life  are  its  most  vitally  significant 
portions,  because  they  are,  or  at  least  should  be, 
covered  with  just  this  kind  of  magically  irrespon- 
sible spell. 

And  now  what  is  the  result  of  all  these  consid- 
erations and  quotations?  It  is  negative  in  one 
sense,  but  positive  in  another.  It  absolutely  for- 
bids us  to  be  forward  in  pronouncing  on  the 

«  Op.  cit.,  pp.  210-222  (abridged). 


264  TALKS   TO   STUDENTS 

meaninglessness  of  forms  of  existence  other  than 
our  own ;  and  it  commands  us  to  tolerate,  respect, 
and  indulge  those  whom  we  see  harmlessly  inter- 
ested and  happy  in  their  own  ways,  however  unin- 
telligible these  may  be  to  us.  Hands  off:  neither 
the  whole  of  truth  nor  the  whole  of  good  is  re- 
vealed to  any  single  observer,  although  each  ob- 
server gains  a  partial  superiority  of  insight  from 
the  peculiar  position  in  which  he  stands.  Even 
prisons  and  sick-rooms  have  their  special  revela- 
tions. It  is  enough  to  ask  of  each  of  us  that  he 
should  be  faithful  to  his  own  opportunities  and 
make  the  most  of  his  own  blessings,  without  pre- 
suming to  regulate  the  rest  of  the  vast  field. 


III. 

WHAT  MAKES   A  LIFE  SIGNIFICANT 

IN  my  previous  talk,  'On  a  Certain  Blindness,' 
I  tried  to  make  you  feel  how  soaked  and  shot- 
through  life  is  with  values  and  meanings  which 
we  fail  to  realize  because  of  our  external  and  in- 
sensible point  of  view.  The  meanings  are  there 
for  the  others,  but  they  are  not  there  for  us. 
There  lies  more  than  a  mere  interest  of  curious 
speculation  in  understanding  this.  It  has  the 
most  tremendous  practical  importance.  I  wish 
that  I  could  convince  you  of  it  as  I  feel  it  myself. 
It  is  the  basis  of  all  our  tolerance,  social,  relig- 
ious, and  political.  The  forgetting  of  it  lies  at 
the  root  of  every  stupid  and  sanguinary  mistake 
that  rulers  over  subject-peoples  make.  The  first 
thing  to  learn  in  intercourse  with  others  is  non- 
interference with  their  own  peculiar  ways  of  being 
happy,  provided  those  ways  do  not  assume  to 
interfere  by  violence  with  ours.  No  one  has  in- 


266  TALKS   TO   STUDENTS 

sight  into  all  the  ideals.  No  one  should  presume 
to  judge  them  off-hand.  The  pretension  to  dog- 
matize about  them  in  each  other  is  the  root  of 
most  human  injustices  and  cruelties,  and  the  trait 
in  human  character  most  likely  to  make  the 
angels  weep. 

Every  Jack  sees  in  his  own  particular  Jill 
charms  and  perfections  to  the  enchantment  of 
which  we  stolid  onlookers  are  stone-cold.  And 
which  has  the  superior  view  of  the  absolute 
truth,  he  or  we?  Which  has  the  more  vital  in- 
sight into  the  nature  of  Jill's  existence,  as  a  fact  ? 
Is  he  in  excess,  being  in  this  matter  a  maniac? 
or  are  we  in  defect,  being  victims  of  a  pathologi- 
cal anaesthesia  as  regards  Jill's  magical  impor- 
tance? Surely  the  latter;  surely  to  Jack  are 
the  profounder  truths  revealed;  surely  poor 
Jill's  palpitating  little  life-throbs  are  among  the 
wonders  of  creation,  are  worthy  of  this  sympa- 
thetic interest ;  and  it  is  to  our  shame  that  the 
rest  of  us  cannot  feel  like  Jack.  For  Jack  real- 
izes Jill  concretely,  and  we  do  not.  He  strug- 
gles toward  a  union  with  her  inner  life,  divining 
her  feelings,  anticipating  her  desires,  understand- 
ing her  limits  as  manfully  as  he  can,  and  yet 
inadequately,  too;  for  he  also  is  afflicted  with 


LOVE  DISPELS   BLINDNESS  267 

some  blindness,  even  here.  Whilst  we,  dead 
clods  that  we  are,  do  not  even  seek  after  these 
things,  but  are  contented  that  that  portion  of 
eternal  fact  named  Jill  should  be  for  us  as 
if  it  were  not.  Jill,  who  knows  her  inner  life, 
knows  that  Jack's  way  of  taking  it  —  so  im- 
portantly —  is  the  true  and  serious  way ;  and  she 
responds  to  the  truth  in  him  by  taking  him  truly 
and  seriously,  too.  May  the  ancient  blindness 
never  wrap  its  clouds  about  either  of  them 
again !  Where  would  any  of  us  be,  were  there 
no  one  willing  to  know  us  as  we  really  are 
or  ready  to  repay  us  for  our  insight  by  making 
recognizant  return?  We  ought,  all  of  us,  to 
realize  each  other  in  this  intense,  pathetic,  and 
important  way. 

If  you  say  that  this  is  absurd,  and  that  we  can- 
not be  in  love  with  everyone  at  once,  I  merely 
point  out  to  you  that,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  certain 
persons  do  exist  with  an  enormous  capacity  for 
friendship  and  for  taking  delight  in  other  people's 
lives ;  and  that  such  persons  know  more  of  truth 
than  if  their  hearts  were  not  so  big.  The  vice  of 
ordinary  Jack  and  Jill  affection  is  not  its  inten- 
sity, but  its  exclusions  and  its  jealousies.  Leave 
those  out,  and  you  see  that  the  ideal  I  am  holding 


\ 

268  TALKS   TO   STUDENTS 

up  before  you,  however  impracticable  to-day,  yet 
contains  nothing  intrinsically  absurd. 

We  have  unquestionably  a  great  cloud-bank  of 
ancestral  blindness  weighing  down  upon  us,  only 
transiently  riven  here  and  there  by  fitful  revela- 
tions of  the  truth.  It  is  vain  to  hope  for  this 
state  of  things  to  alter  much.  Our  inner  secrets 
must  remain  for  the  most  part  impenetrable  by 
others,  for  beings  as  essentially  practical  as  we  are 
are  necessarily  short  of  sight.  But,  if  we  cannot 
gain  much  positive  insight  into  one  another,  can- 
not we  at  least  use  our  sense  of  our  own  blindness 
to  make  us  more  cautious  in  going  over  the  dark 
places?  Cannot  we  escape  some  of  those  hide- 
ous ancestral  intolerances  and  cruelties,  and  posi- 
tive reversals  of  the  truth  ? 

For  the  remainder  of  this  hour  I  invite  you  to 
seek  with  me  some  principle  to  make  our  toler- 
ance less  chaotic.  And,  as  I  began  my  previous 
lecture  by  a  personal  reminiscence,  I  am  going  to 
ask  your  indulgence  for  a  similar  bit  of  egotism 
now. 

A  few  summers  ago  I  spent  a  happy  week  at 
the  famous  Assembly  Grounds  on  the  borders  of 
Chautauqua  Lake.  The  moment  one  treads  that 
sacred  enclosure,  one  feels  one's  self  in  an  atmos- 


CHAUTAUQUA  269 

phere  of  success.  Sobriety  and  industry,  intelli- 
gence and  goodness,  orderliness  and  ideality,  pros- 
perity and  cheerfulness,  pervade  the  air.  It  is  a 
serious  and  studious  picnic  on  a  gigantic  scale. 
Here  you  have  a  town  of  many  thousands  of  in- 
habitants, beautifully  laid  out  in  the  forest  and 
drained,  and  equipped  with  means  for  satisfying 
all  the  necessary  lower  and  most  of  the  super- 
fluous higher  wants  of  man.  You  have  a  first- 
class  college  in  full  blast.  You  have  magnificent 
music  —  a  chorus  of  seven  hundred  voices,  with 
possibly  the  most  perfect  open-air  auditorium  in 
the  world.  You  have  every  sort  of  athletic  exer- 
cise from  sailing,  rowing,  swimming,  bicycling,  to 
the  ball-field  and  the  more  artificial  doings  which 
the  gymnasium  affords.  You  have  kindergartens 
and  model  secondary  schools.  You  have  general 
religious  services  and  special  club-houses  for  the 
several  sects.  You  have  perpetually  running  soda- 
water  fountains,  and  daily  popular  lectures  by 
distinguished  men.  You  have  the  best  of  com- 
pany, and  yet  no  effort.  You  have  no  zymotic 
diseases,  no  poverty,  no  drunkenness,  no  crime, 
no  police.  You  have  culture,  you  have  kindness, 
you  have  cheapness,  you  have  equality,  you  have 
the  best  fruits  of  what  mankind  has  fought  and 


270  TALKS   TO   STUDENTS 

bled  and  striven  for  under  the  name  of  civiliza- 
tion for  centuries.  You  have,  in  short,  a  fore- 
taste of  what  human  society  might  be,  were  it 
all  in  the  light,  with  no  suffering  and  no  dark 
corners. 

I  went  in  curiosity  for  a  day.  I  stayed  for  a 
week,  held  spell-bound  by  the  charm  and  ease  of 
everything,  by  the  middle-class  paradise,  without 
a  sin,  without  a  victim,  without  a  blot,  without  a 
tear. 

And  yet  what  was  my  own  astonishment,  on 
emerging  into  the  dark  and  wicked  world  again, 
to  catch  myself  quite  unexpectedly  and  involunta- 
rily saying :  "  Ouf !  what  a  relief !  Now  for  some- 
thing primordial  and  savage,  even  though  it  were 
as  bad  as  an  Armenian  massacre,  to  set  the  bal- 
ance straight  again.  This  order  is  too  tame,  this 
culture  too  second-rate,  this  goodness  too  uninspir- 
ing. This  human  drama  without  a  villain  or  a 
pang ;  this  community  so  refined  that  ice-cream 
soda-water  is  the  utmost  offering  it  can  make  to 
the  brute  animal  in  man ;  this  city  simmering  in 
the  tepid  lakeside  sun ;  this  atrocious  harmlessness 
of  all  things, —  I  cannot  abide  with  them.  Let  me 
take  my  chances  again  in  the  big  outside  worldly 
wilderness  with  all  its  sins  and  sufferings.  There 


CHAUTAUQTTA  271 

are  the  heights  and  depths,  tne  precipices  and  the 
steep  ideals,  the  gleams  of  the  awful  and  the  in- 
finite ;  and  there  is  more  hope  and  help  a  thousand 
times  than  in  this  dead  level  and  quintessence  of 
every  mediocrity." 

Such  was  the  sudden  right-about-face  performed 
for  me  by  my  lawless  fancy !  There  had  been 
spread  before  me  the  realization  —  on  a  small, 
sample  scale  of  course  —  of  all  the  ideals  for  which 
our  civilization  has  been  striving:  security,  in- 
telligence, humanity,  and  order ;  and  here  was 
the  instinctive  hostile  reaction,  not  of  the  natural 
man,  but  of  a  so-called  cultivated  man  upon  such 
a  Utopia.  There  seemed  thus  to  be  a  self-contra- 
diction and  paradox  somewhere,  which  I,  as  a  pro- 
fessor drawing  a  full  salary,  was  in  duty  bound  to 
unravel  and  explain,  if  I  could. 

So  I  meditated.  And,  first  of  all,  I  asked  myself 
what  the  thing  was  that  was  so  lacking  in  this 
Sabbatical  city,  and  the  lack  of  which  kept  one 
forever  falling  short  of  the  higher  sort  of  content- 
ment. And  I  soon  recognized  that  it  was  the  ele- 
ment that  gives  to  the  wicked  outer  world  all  its 
moral  style,  expressiveness  and  picturesqueness, — 
the  element  of  precipitousness,  so  to  call  it,  of 
strength  and  strenuousness,  intensity  and  danger. 


272  TALKS   TO   STUDENTS 

What  excites  and  interests  the  looker-on  at  life, 
what  the  romances  and  the  statues  celebrate  and 
the  grim  civic  monuments  remind  us  of,  is  the 
everlasting  battle  of  the  powers  of  light  with 
those  of  darkness ;  with  heroism,  reduced  to  its 
bare  chance,  yet  ever  and  anon  snatching  victory 
from  the  jaws  of  death.  But  in  this  unspeakable 
Chautauqua  there  was  no  potentiality  of  death  in 
sight  anywhere,  and  no  point  of  the  compass 
visible  from  which  danger  might  possibly  appear. 
The  ideal  was  so  completely  victorious  already 
that  no  sign  of  any  previous  battle  remained, 
the  place  just  resting  on  its  oars.  But  what  our 
human  emotions  seem  to  require  is  the  sight 
of  the  struggle  going  on.  The  moment  the  fruits 
are  being  merely  eaten,  things  become  ignoble. 
Sweat  and  effort,  human  nature  strained  to  its 
uttermost  and  on  the  rack,  yet  getting  through 
alive,  and  then  turning  its  back  on  its  success  to 
pursue  another  more  rare  and  arduous  still — this  is 
the  sort  of  thing  the  presence  of  which  inspires  us, 
and  the  reality  of  which  it  seems  to  be  the  func- 
tion of  all  the  higher  forms  of  literature  and  fine 
art  to  bring  home  to  us  and  suggest.  At  Chau- 
tauqua there  were  no  racks,  even  in  the  place's 
historical  museum ;  and  no  sweat,  except  possibly 


GBOWING   TAMENESS   OF   THE  WOULD        273 

the  gentle  moisture  on  the  brow  of  some  lecturer, 
or  on  the  sides  of  some  player  in  the  ball-field. 

Such  absence  of  human  nature  in  extremis  any- 
where seemed,  then,  a  sufficient  explanation  for 
Chautauqua's  flatness  and  lack  of  zest. 

But  was  not  this  a  paradox  well  calculated  to 
fill  one  with  dismay  ?  It  looks  indeed,  thought  I, 
as  if  the  romantic  idealists  with  their  pessimism 
about  our  civilization  were,  after  all,  quite  right. 
An  irremediable  flatness  is  coming  over  the  world. 
Bourgeoisie  and  mediocrity,  church  sociables  and 
teachers'  conventions,  are  taking  the  place  of  the 
old  heights  and  depths  and  romantic  chiaroscuro. 
And,  to  get  human  life  in  its  wild  intensity,  we 
must  in  future  turn  more  and  more  away  from  the 
actual,  and  forget  it,  if  we  can,  in  the  romancer's 
or  the  poet's  pages.  The  whole  world,  delightful 
and  sinful  as  it  may  still  appear  for  a  moment  to 
one  just  escaped  from  the  Chautauquan  enclosure, 
is  nevertheless  obeying  more  and  more  just  those 
ideals  that  are  sure  to  make  of  it  in  the  end  a  mere 
Chautauqua  Assembly  on  an  enormous  scale. 
Was  im  GLe&ang  soil  leben  muss  im  Leben  untergehn. 
Even  now,  in  our  own  country,  correctness,  fair- 
ness, and  compromise  for  every  small  advantage 
are  crowding  out  all  other  qualities.  The  higher 


274  TALKS   TO   STUDENTS 

heroisms  and  the  old  rare  flavors  are  passing  out 
of  life.* 

With  these  thoughts  in  my  mind,  I  was  speed- 
ing with  the  train  toward  Buffalo,  when,  near 
that  city,  the  sight  of  a  workman  doing  some- 
thing on  the  dizzy  edge  of  a  sky-scaling  iron  con- 
struction brought  me  to  my  senses  very  suddenly. 
And  now  I  perceived,  by  a  flash  of  insight,  that 
I  had  been  steeping  myself  in  pure  ancestral 
blindness,  and  looking  at  life  with  the  eyes  of  a 
remote  spectator.  Wishing  for  heroism  and  the 
spectacle  of  human  nature  on  the  rack,  I  had  never 
noticed  the  great  fields  of  heroism  lying  round 
about  me,  I  had  failed  to  see  it  present  and  alive. 
I  could  only  think  of  it  as  dead  and  embalmed, 
labelled  and  costumed,  as  it  is  in  the  pages  of 
romance.  And  yet  there  it  was  before  me  in  the 
daily  lives  of  the  laboring  classes.  Not  in  clang- 
ing fights  and  desperate  marches  only  is  heroism 
to  be  looked  for,  but  on  every  railway  bridge  and 
fire-proof  building  that  is  going  up  to-day.  On 
freight-trains,  on  the  decks  of  vessels,  in  cattle- 
yards  and  mines,  on  lumber-rafts,  among  the  fire- 

•Thia  address  was  composed  before  the  Cuban  and  Philippine 
wan.  Such  outbursts  of  the  passion  of  mastery  are,  however,  only 
episodes  in  a  social  process  which  in  the  long  ran  seems  everywhere 
tending  towards  the  Chautauquan  ideals. 


THE  HEROIC   ASPECT   OF   COMMON  LABOR      275 

men  and  the  policemen,  the  demand  for  courage 
is  incessant:  and  the  supply  never  fails.  There, 
every  day  of  the  year  somewhere,  is  human  nat- 
ure in  extremis  for  you.  And  wherever  a  scythe, 
an  axe,  a  pick,  or  a  shovel  is  wielded,  you  have 
it  sweating  and  aching  and  with  its  powers  of 
patient  endurance  racked  to  the  utmost  under 
the  length  of  hours  of  the  strain. 

As  I  awoke  to  all  this  unidealized  heroic  life 
around  me,  the  scales  seemed  to  fall  from  my  eyes ; 
and  a  wave  of  sympathy  greater  than  anything  I 
had  ever  before  felt  with  the  common  life  of 
common  men  began  to  fill  my  soul.  It  began  to 
seem  as  if  virtue  with  horny  hands  and  dirty 
skin  were  the  only  virtue  genuine  and  vital 
enough  to  take  account  of.  Every  other  virtue 
poses ;  none  is  absolutely  unconscious  and  simple, 
and  unexpectant  of  decoration  or  recognition,  like 
this.  These  are  our  soldiers,  thought  I,  these 
our  sustainers,  these  the  very  parents  of  our 
life. 

Many  years  ago,  when  in  Vienna,  I  had 
had  a  similar  feeling  of  awe  and  reverence  in 
looking  at  the  peasant- women,  in  from  the  coun- 
try on  their  business  at  the  market  for  the  day. 
Old  hags  many  of  them  were,  dried  and  brown 


276  TALKS   TO   STUDENTS 

and  wrinkled,  kerchiefed  and  short-petticoated, 
with  thick  wool  stockings  on  their  bony  shanks, 
stumping  through  the  glittering  thoroughfares, 
looking  neither  to  the  right  nor  the  left,  bent 
on  duty,  envying  nothing,  humble-hearted,  re- 
mote;—  and  yet  at  bottom,  when  you  came  to 
think  of  it,  bearing  the  whole  fabric  of  the  splen- 
dors and  corruptions  of  that  city  on  their  labori- 
ous backs.  For  where  would  any  of  it  have  been 
without  their  unremitting,  unrewarded  labor  in 
the  fields?  And  so  with  us:  not  to  our  gen- 
erals and  poets,  I  thought,  but  to  the  Italian  and 
Hungarian  laborers  in  the  Subway,  rather,  ought 
the  monuments  of  gratitude  and  reverence  of 
a  city  like  Boston  to  be  reared. 

If  any  of  you  have  been  readers  of  Tolstoi,  you 
will  see  that  I  passed  into  a  vein  of  feeling  simi- 
lar to  his,  with  its  abhorrence  of  all  that  conven- 
tionally passes  for  distinguished,  and  its  exclusive 
deification  of  the  bravery,  patience,  kindliness, 
and  dumbness  of  the  unconscious  natural  man. 

Where  now  is  our  Tolsto'i,  I  said,  to  bring  the 
truth  of  all*  this  home  to  our  American  bosoms, 
fill  us  with  a  better  insight,  and  wean  us  away 
from  that  spurious  literary  romanticism  on  which 


THE  DIVINE   IS   THE   COMMON  277 

our  wretched  culture  —  as  it  calls  itself  —  is  fed  ? 
Divinity  lies  all  about  us,  and  culture  is  too  hide- 
bound to  even  suspect  the  fact.  Could  a  Howells 
or  a  Kipling  be  enlisted  in  this  mission?  or  are 
they  still  too  deep  in  the  ancestral  blindness,  and 
not  humane  enough  for  the  inner  joy  and  meaning 
of  the  laborer's  existence  to  be  really  revealed? 
Must  we  wait  for  some  one  born  and  bred  and 
living  as  a  laborer  himself,  but  who,  by  grace  of 
Heaven,  shall  also  find  a  literary  voice  ? 

And  there  I  rested  on  that  day,  with  a  sense  of 
widening  of  vision,  and  with  what  it  is  surely  fair 
to  call  an  increase  of  religious  insight  into  life. 
In  God's  eyes,  the  differences  of  social  position, 
of  intellect,  of  culture,  of  cleanliness,  of  dress, 
which  different  men  exhibit,  and  all  the  other 
rarities  and  exceptions  on  which  they  so  fantasti- 
cally pin  their  pride,  must  be  so  small  as  practi- 
cally, quite  to  vanish ;  and  all  that  should  remain 
is  the  common  fact  that  here  we  are,  a  countless 
multitude  of  vessels  of  life,  each  of  us  pent  in  to 
peculiar  difficulties,  with  which  we  must  sev- 
erally struggle  by  using  whatever  of  fortitude 
and  goodness  we  can  summon  up.  The  exercise 
of  the  courage,  patience,  and  kindness,  must  be 
the  significant  portion  of  the  whole  business; 


278  TALKS  TO  STUDENTS 

and  the  distinctions  of  position  can  only  be  a 
manner  of  diversifying  the  phenomenal  surface 
upon  which  these  underground  virtues  may  mani- 
fest their  effects.  At  this  rate,  the  deepest  human 
life  is  everywhere,  is  eternal.  And,  if  any  human 
attributes  exist  only  in  particular  individuals, 
they  must  belong  to  the  mere  trapping  and  dec- 
oration of  the  surface-show. 

Thus  are  men's  lives  levelled  up  as  well  as 
levelled  down, —  levelled  up  in  their  common  inner 
meaning,  levelled  down  in  their  outer  gloriousness 
and  show.  Yet  always,  we  must  confess,  this 
levelling  insight  tends  to  be  obscured  again ;  and 
always  the  ancestral  blindness  returns  and  wraps 
us  up,  so  that  we  end  once  more  by  thinking  that 
creation  can  be  for  no  other  purpose  than  to 
develop  remarkable  situations  and  conventional 
distinctions  and  merits.  And  then  always  some 
new  leveller  in  the  shape  of  a  religious  prophet 
lias  to  arise  —  the  Buddha,  the  Christ,  or  some 
Saint  Francis,  some  Rousseau  or  Tolstoi' — to 
redispel  our  blindness.  Yet,  little  by  little,  there 
comes  some  stable  gain;  for  the  world  does  get 
more  humane,  and  the  religion  of  democracy 
tends  toward  permanent  increase. 


TOLSTOI   ON   COMMON  PEOPLE  279 

This,  as  I  said,  became  for  a  time  my  convic- 
tion, and  gave  me  great  content.  I  have  put  the 
matter  into  the  form  of  a  personal  reminiscence,  so 
that  I  might  lead  you  into  it  more  directly  and 
completely,  and  so  save  time.  But  now  I  am 
going  to  discuss  the  rest  of  it  with  you  in  a  more 
impersonal  way. 

Tolstoi's  levelling  philosophy  began  long  before 
he  had  the  crisis  of  melancholy  commemorated  in 
that  wonderful  document  of  his  entitled  *  My  Con- 
fession,' which  led  the  way  to  his  more  specifically 
religious  works.  In  his  masterpiece  4  War  and 
Peace,' —  assuredly  the  greatest  of  human  novels, — 
the  r61e  of  the  spiritual  hero  is  given  to  a  poor  little 
soldier  named  Karata'ieff,  so  helpful,  so  cheerful, 
and  so  devout  that,  in  spite  of  his  ignorance  and 
filthiness,  the  sight  of  him  opens  the  heavens, 
which  have  been  closed,  to  the  mind  of  the  prin- 
cipal character  of  the  book ;  and  his  example  evi- 
dently is  meant  by  Tolstoi  to  let  God  into  the 
world  again  for  the  reader.  Poor  little  Karataieff 
is  taken  prisoner  by  the  French ;  and  when  too  ex- 
hausted by  hardship  and  fever  to  march,  is  shot  as 
other  prisoners  were  in  the  famous  retreat  from 
Moscow.  The  last  view  one  gets  of  him  is  his 
little  figure  leaning  against  a  white  birch-tree,  and 
uncomplainingly  awaiting  the  end. 


280  TALKS   TO   STUDENTS 

"The  more,"  writes  Tolsto'i  in  the  work  'My 
Confession,'  "the  more  I  examined  the  life  of 
these  laboring  folks,  the  more  persuaded  I  be- 
came that  they  veritably  have  faith,  and  get 
from  it  alone  the  sense  and  the  possibility  of 
life.  .  .  .  Contrariwise  to  those  of  our  own  class, 
who  protest  against  destiny  and  grow  indignant 
at  its  rigor,  these  people  receive  maladies  and 
misfortunes  without  revolt,  without  opposition, 
and  with  a  firm  and  tranquil  confidence  that  all 
had  to  be  like  that,  could  not  be  otherwise, 
and  that  it  is  all  right  so.  ...  The  more  we  live 
by  our  intellect,  the  less  we  understand  the 
meaning  of  life.  We  see  only  a  cruel  jest  in  suf- 
fering and  death,  whereas  these  people  live,  suffer, 
and  draw  near  to  death  with  tranquillity,  and  of- 
tener  than  not  with  joy.  .  .  .  There  are  enormous 
multitudes  of  them  happy  with  the  most  perfect 
happiness,  although  deprived  of  what  for  us  is  the 
sole  good  of  life.  Those  who  understand  life's 
meaning,  and  know  how  to  live  and  die  thus,  are 
to  be  counted  not  by  twos,  threes,  tens,  but  by  hun- 
dreds, thousands,  millions.  They  labor  quietly, 
endure  privations  and  pains,  live  and  die,  and 
throughout  everything  see  the  good  without  see- 
ing the  vanity.  I  had  to  love  these  people.  The 


STEVENSON  ON  COMMON  PEOPLE  281 

more  I  entered  into  their  life,  the  more  I  loved 
them;  and  the  more  it  became  possible  for  me 
to  live,  too.  It  came  about  not  only  that  the 
life  of  our  society,  of  the  learned  and  of  the 
rich,  disgusted  me  —  more  than  that,  it  lost  all 
semblance  of  meaning  in  my  eyes.  All  our  ac- 
tions, our  deliberations,  our  sciences,  our  arts, 
all  appeared  to  me  with  a  new  significance. 
I  understood  that  these  things  might  be  charm- 
ing pastimes,  but  that  one  need  seek  in  them 
no  depth,  whereas  the  life  of  the  hard-work- 
ing populace,  of  that  multitude  of  human  be- 
ings who  really  contribute  to  existence,  ap- 
peared to  me  in  its  true  light.  I  understood  that 
there  veritably  is  life,  that  the  meaning  which  life 
there  receives  is  the  truth;  and  I  accepted  it."  * 

In  a  similar  way  does  Stevenson  appeal  to  our 
piety  toward  the  elemental  virtue  of  mankind. 

"  What  a  wonderful  thing,"  he  writes,  f  "  is  this 
Man !  How  surprising  are  his  attributes  !  Poor 
soul,  here  for  so  little,  cast  among  so  many 
hardships,  savagely  surrounded,  savagely  de- 
scended, irremediably  condemned  to  prey  upon 
his  fellow-lives, —  who  should  have  blamed  him, 

*  My  Confession,  X.  (condensed). 

t  Across  the  Plains :   "Pulyis  et  Umbra  "  (abridged). 


282  TALKS  TO  STUDENTS 

had  he  been  of  a  piece  with  his  destiny  and  a 
being  merely  barbarous  ?  .  .  .  [Yet]  it  matters  not 
where  we  look,  under  what  climate  we  observe 
him,  in  what  stage  of  society,  in  what  depth 
of  ignorance,  burdened  with  what  erroneous  mo- 
rality; in  ships  at  sea,  a  man  inured  to  hard 
ship  and  vile  pleasures,  his  brightest  hope  a 
fiddle  in  a  tavern,  and  a  bedizened  trull  who 
sells  herself  to  rob  him,  and  he,  for  all  that, 
simple,  innocent,  cheerful,  kindly  like  a  child, 
constant  to  toil,  brave  to  drown,  for  others;  .  .  . 
in  the  slums  of  cities,  moving  among  indiffer- 
ent millions  to  mechanical  employments,  with- 
out hope  of  change  in  the  future,  with  scarce  a 
pleasure  in  the  present,  and  yet  true  to  his 
virtues,  honest  up  to  his  lights,  kind  to  his 
neighbors,  tempted  perhaps  in  vain  by  the  bright 
gin-palace,  .  .  .  often  repaying  the  world's  scorn 
with  service,  often  standing  firm  upon  a  scruple ; 
.  .  .  everywhere  some  virtue  cherished  or  affected, 
everywhere  some  decency  of  thought  and  cour- 
age, everywhere  the  ensign  of  man's  ineffectual 
goodness, — ah!  if  I  could  show  you  this!  If  I 
could  show  you  these  men  and  women  all  the 
world  over,  in  every  stage  of  history,  under 
every  abuse  of  error,  under  every  circumstance 


TOLSTOI'S  ONB-SIDEDNESS  283 

of  failure,  without  hope,  without  help,  without 
thanks,  still  obscurely  fighting  the  lost  fight  of 
virtue,  still  clinging  to  some  rag  of  honor,  the 
poor  jewel  of  their  souls." 

All  this  is  as  true  as  it  is  splendid,  and  terribly 
do  we  need  our  Tolstois  and  Stevensons  to  keep 
our  sense  for  it  alive.  Yet  you  remember  the 
Irishman  who,  when  asked,  "Is  not  one  man  as 
good  as  another?"  replied:  "Yes;  and  a  great 
deal  better,  too ! "  Similarly  (it  seems  to  me) 
does  Tolstoi  overcorrect  our  social  prejudices, 
when  he  makes  his  love  of  the  peasant  so  ex- 
clusive, and  hardens  his  heart  toward  the  edu- 
cated man  as  absolutely  as  he  does.  Grant  that 
at  Chautauqua  there  was  little  moral  effort,  little 
sweat  or  muscular  strain  in  view.  Still,  deep 
down  in  the  souls  of  the  participants  we  may  be 
sure  that  something  of  the  sort  was  hid,  some 
inner  stress,  some  vital  virtue  not  found  wanting 
when  required.  And,  after  all,  the  question  re- 
curs, and  forces  itself  upon  us,  Is  it  so  certain 
that  the  surroundings  and  circumstances  of  the 
virtue  do  make  so  little  difference  in  the  impor- 
tance of  the  result  ?  Is  the  functional  utility,  the 
worth  to  the  universe  of  a  certain  definite  amount 
of  courage,  kindliness,  and  patience,  no  greater  if 


284  TALKS   TO   STUDENTS 

the  possessor  of  these  virtues  is  in  an  educated 
situation,  working  out  far-reaching  tasks,  than  if 
he  be  an  illiterate  nobody,  hewing  wood  and 
drawing  water,  just  to  keep  himself  alive?  Tol- 
stoi's philosophy,  deeply  enlightening  though  it 
certainly  is,  remains  a  false  abstraction.  It  sa- 
vors too  much  of  that  oriental  pessimism  and 
nihilism  of  his,  which  declares  the  whole  phenom- 
enal world  and  its  facts  and  their  distinctions  to 
be  a  cunning  fraud. 

A  mere  bare  fraud  is  just  what  our  Western 
common  sense  will  never  believe  the  phenomenal 
world  to  be.  It  admits  fully  that  the  inner  joys 
and  virtues  are  the  essential  part  of  life's  business, 
but  it  is  sure  that  some  positive  part  is  also  played 
by  the  adjuncts  of  the  show.  If  it  is  idiotic  in 
romanticism  to  recognize  the  heroic  only  when  it 
sees  it  labelled  and  dressed-up  in  books,  it  is  really 
just  as  idiotic  to  see  it  only  in  the  dirty  boots  and 
sweaty  shirt  of  some  one  in  the  fields.  It  is  with 
us  really  under  every  disguise :  at  Chautauqua ; 
here  in  your  college ;  in  the  stock-yards  and  on 
the  freight-trains;  and  in  the  czar  of  Russia's 
court.  But,  instinctively,  we  make  a  combination 
of  two  things  in  judging  the  total  significance  of 


WALTER   WYCKOFF   QUOTED  285 

a  human  being.  We  feel  it  to  be  some  sort  of  a 
product  (if  such  a  product  -only  could  be  calcu- 
lated) of  his  inner  virtue  and  his  outer  place, — 
neither  singly  taken,  but  both  conjoined.  If  the 
outer  differences  had  no  meaning  for  life,  why  in- 
deed should  all  this  immense  variety  of  them 
exist  ?  They  must  be  significant  elements  of  the 
world  as  well. 

Just  test  Tolstoi's  deification  of  the  mere  man- 
ual laborer  by  the  facts.  This  is  what  Mr.  Walter 
Wyckoff,  after  working  as  an  unskilled  laborer  in 
the  demolition  of  some  buildings  at  West  Point, 
writes  of  the  spiritual  condition  of  the  class  of 
men  to  which  he  temporarily  chose  to  belong :  — 

"  The  salient  features  of  our  condition  are  plain 
enough.  We  are  grown  men,  and  are  without  a 
trade.  In  the  labor-market  we  stand  ready  to  sell 
to  the  highest  bidder  our  mere  muscular  strength 
for  so  many  hours  each  day.  We  are  thus  in  the 
lowest  grade  of  labor.  And,  selling  our  muscular 
strength  in  the  open  market  for  what  it  will 
bring,  we  sell  it  under  peculiar  conditions.  It  is 
all  the  capital  that  we  have.  We  have  no  reserve 
means  of  subsistence,  and  cannot,  therefore,  stand 
off  for  a  'reserve  price.'  We  sell  under  the  ne- 
cessity of  satisfying  imminent  hunger.  Broadly 


286  TALKS  TO  STUDENTS 

speaking,  we  must  sell  our  labor  or  starve ;  and, 
as  hunger  is  a  matter  of  a  few  hours,  and  we  have 
no  other  way  of  meeting  this  need,  we  must  sell 
at  once  for  what  the  market  offers  for  our  labor. 

"  Our  employer  is  buying  labor  in  a  dear  market, 
and  he  will  certainly  get  from  us  as  much  work  as 
he  can  at  the  price.  The  gang-boss  is  secured  for 
this  purpose,  and  thoroughly  does  he  know  his 
business.  He  has  sole  command  of  us.  He  never 
saw  us  before,  and  he  will  discharge  us  all  when 
the  debris  is  cleared  away.  In  the  mean  time  he 
must  get  from  us,  if  he  can,  the  utmost  of  physical 
labor  which  we,  individually  and  collectively,  are 
capable  of.  If  he  should  drive  some  of  us  to  ex- 
haustion, and  we  should  not  be  able  to  continue  at 
work,  he  would  not  be  the  loser ;  for  the  market 
would  soon  supply  him  with  others  to  take  our 
places. 

"  We  are  ignorant  men,  but  so  much  we  clearly 
see, —  that  we  have  sold  our  labor  where  we  could 
sell  it  dearest,  and  our  employer  has  bought  it 
where  he  could  buy  it  cheapest.  He  has  paid 
high,  and  he  must  get  all  the  labor  that  he  can ; 
and,  by  a  strong  instinct  which  possesses  us,  we 
shall  part  with  as  little  as  we  can.  From  work 
like  ours  there  seems  to  us  to  have  been  elimi- 


WALTER   WY.CKOFF   QUOTED  287 

nated  every  element  which,  constitutes  the  nobility 
of  labor.  We  feel  no  personal  pride  in  its  prog- 
ress, and  no  community  of  interest  with  our  em- 
ployer. There  is  none  of  the  joy  of  responsibility, 
none  of  the  sense  of  achievement,  only  the  dull 
monotony  of  grinding  toil,  with  the  longing  for  the 
signal  to  quit  work,  and  for  our  wages  at  the  end. 

"  And  being  what  we  are,  the  dregs  of  the  labor 
market,  and  having  no  certainty  of  permanent  em- 
ployment, and  no  organization  among  ourselves, 
we  must  expect  to  work  under  the  watchful  eye 
of  a  gang-boss,  and  be  driven,  like  the  wage-slaves 
that  we  are,  through  our  tasks. 

"  All  this  is  to  tell  us,  in  effect,  that  our  lives 
are  hard,  barren,  hopeless  lives." 

And  such  hard,  barren,  hopeless  lives,  surely, 
are  not  lives  in  which  one  ought  to  be  willing 
permanently  to  remain.  And  why  is  this  so  ?  Is 
it  because  they  are  so  dirty?  Well,  Nansen  grew 
a  great  deal  dirtier  on  his  polar  expedition ;  and  we 
think  none  the  worse  of  his  life  for  that.  Is  it  the 
insensibility?  Our  soldiers  have  to  grow  vastly 
more  insensible,  and  we  extol  them  to  the  skies. 
Is  it  the  poverty  ?  Poverty  has  been  reckoned  the 
crowning  beauty  of  many  a  heroic  career.  Is  it 
the  slavery  to  a  task,  the  loss  of  finer  pleasures  ? 


288  TALKS  TO   STUDENTS 

Such  slavery  and  loss  are  of  the  very  essence  of 
the  higher  fortitude,  and  are  always  counted  to  its 
credit, —  read  the  records  of  missionary  devotion 
all  over  the  world.  It  is  not  any  one  of  these 
things,  then,  taken  by  itself, —  no,  nor  all  of  them 
together, —  that  make  such  a  life  undesirable.  A 
man  might  in  truth  live  like  an  unskilled  laborer, 
and  do  the  work  of  one,  and  yet  count  as  one  of  the 
noblest  of  God's  creatures.  Quite  possibly  there 
were  some  such  persons  in  the  gang  that  our  author 
describes ;  but  the  current  of  their  souls  ran  under- 
ground ;  and  he  was  too  steeped  in  the  ancestral 
blindness  to  discern  it. 

If  there  were  any  such  morally  exceptional  indi- 
viduals, however,  what  made  them  different  from 
the  rest  ?  It  can  only  have  been  this, —  that  their 
souls  worked  and  endured  in  obedience  to  some 
inner  ideal,  while  their  comrades  were  not  actu- 
ated by  anything  worthy  of  that  name.  These 
ideals  of  other  lives  are  among  those  secrets  that 
we  can  almost  never  penetrate,  although  some- 
thing about  the  man  may  often  tell  us  when  they 
are  there.  In  Mr.  WyckofFs  own  case  we  know 
exactly  what  the  self-imposed  ideal  was.  Partly 
he  had  stumped  himself,  as  the  boys  say,  to  carry 
through  a  strenuous  achievement ;  but  mainly  he 


PHILLIPS  BROOKS  ON  POVERTY     289 

wished  to  enlarge  his  sympathetic  insight  into  fel- 
low-lives. For  this  his  sweat  and  toil  acquire  a 
certain  heroic  significance,  and  make  us  accord  to 
him  exceptional  esteem.  But  it  is  easy  to  imagine 
his  fellows  with  various  other  ideals.  To  say  noth- 
ing of  wives  and  babies,  one  may  have  been  a  con- 
vert of  the  Salvation  Army,  and  had  a  nightingale 
singing  of  expiation  and  forgiveness  in  his  heart 
all  the  while  he  labored.  Or  there  might  have 
been  an  apostle  like  Tolstoi  himself,  or  his  compa- 
triot Bondareff,  in  the  gang,  voluntarily  embrac- 
ing labor  as  their  religious  mission.  Class-loyalty 
was  undoubtedly  an  ideal  with  many.  And  who 
knows  how  much  of  that  higher  manliness  of  pov- 
erty, of  which  Phillips  Brooks  has  spoken  so  pene- 
tratingly, was  or  was  not  present  in  that  gang  ? 

"  A  rugged,  barren  land,"  says  Phillips  Brooks, 
"  is  poverty  to  live  in, —  a  land  where  I  am  thank- 
ful very  often  if  I  can  get  a  berry  or  a  root  to  eat. 
But  living  in  it  really,  letting  it  bear  witness  to 
me  of  itself,  not  dishonoring  it  all  the  time  by 
judging  it  after  the  standard  of  the  other  lands, 
gradually  there  come  out  its  qualities.  Behold ! 
no  land  like  this  barren  and  naked  land  of  pov- 
erty could  show  the  moral  geology  of  the  world. 
See  how  the  hard  ribs  .  .  .  stand  out  strong  and 


290  TALKS   TO   STUDENTS 

solid.  No  life  like  poverty  could  so  get  one  to 
the  heart  of  things  and  make  men  know  their 
meaning,  could  so  let  us  feel  life  and  the  world 
with  all  the  soft  cushions  stripped  off  and  thrown 
away.  .  .  .  Poverty  makes  men  come  very  near 
each  other,  and  recognize  each  other's  human 
hearts;  and  poverty,  highest  and  best  of  all,  de- 
mands and  cries  out  for  faith  in  God.  ...  I  know 
how  superficial  and  unfeeling,  how  like  mere 
mockery,  words  in  praise  of  poverty  may  seem.  .  .  . 
But  I  am  sure  that  the  poor  man's  dignity  and 
freedom,  his  self-respect  and  energy,  depend  upon 
his  cordial  knowledge  that  his  poverty  is  a  true 
region  and  kind  of  life,  with  its  own  chances  of 
character,  its  own  springs  of  happiness  and  reve- 
lations of  God.  Let  him  resist  the  characterless- 
ness which  often  come  with  being  poor.  Let  him 
insist  on  respecting  the  condition  where  he  lives. 
Let  him  learn  to  love  it,  so  that  by  and  by,  [if]  he 
grows  rich,  he  shall  go  out  of  the  low  door  of  the 
old  familiar  poverty  with  a  true  pang  of  regret, 
and  with  a  true  honor  for  the  narrow  home  in 
which  he  has  lived  so  long."  * 

The   barrenness  and   ignobleness   of  the   more 
usual  laborer's   life  consist  in  the  fact  that  it  is 

•Sermons,  5th  Series,  New  York,  1893,  pp.  168, 167. 


THE   NEED   OF  AN  IDEAL  291 

moved  by  no  such  ideal  inner  springs.  The  back- 
ache, the  long  hours,  the  danger,  are  patiently 
endured  —  for  what  ?  To  gain  a  quid  of  tobacco, 
a  glass  of  beer,  a  cup  of  coffee,  a  meal,  and  a  bed, 
and  to  begin  again  the  next  day  and  shirk  as  much 
as  one  can.  This  really  is  why  we  raise  no  monu- 
ment to  the  laborers  in  the  Subway,  even  though 
they  be  our  conscripts,  and  even  though  after  a 
fashion  our  city  is  indeed  based  upon  their  patient 
hearts  and  enduring  backs  and  shoulders.  And 
this  is  why  we  do  raise  monuments  to  our  sol- 
diers, whose  outward  conditions  were  even  brutal- 
ler  still.  The  soldiers  are  supposed  to  have  fol- 
lowed an  ideal,  and  the  laborers  are  supposed  to 
have  followed  none. 

You  see,  my  friends,  how  the  plot  now  thickens ; 
and  how  strangely  the  complexities  of  this  wonder- 
ful human  nature  of  ours  begin  to  develop  under 
our  hands.  We  have  seen  the  blindness  and  dead- 
ness  to  each  other  which  are  our  natural  inheri- 
tance ;  and,  in  spite  of  them,  we  have  been  led  to 
acknowledge  an  inner  meaning  which  passeth 
show,  and  which  may  be  present  in  the  lives  of 
others  where  we  least  descry  it.  And  now  we 
are  led  to  say  that  such  inner  meaning  can  be 
complete,  and  valid  for  us  also,  only  when  the 


292  TALKS  TO  STUDENTS 

inner  joy,  courage,  and  endurance  are  joined  with 
an  ideal. 

But  what,  exactly,  do  we  mean  by  an  ideal? 
Can  we  give  no  definite  account  of  such  a  word  ? 

To  a  certain  extent  we  can.  An  ideal,  for  in- 
stance, must  be  something  intellectually  con- 
ceived, something  of  which  we  are  not  uncon- 
scious, if  we  have  it ;  and  it  must  carry  with  it 
that  sort  of  outlook,  uplift,  and  brightness  that 
go  with  all  intellectual  facts.  Secondly,  there 
must  be  novelty  in  an  ideal, —  novelty  at  least  for 
him  whom  the  ideal  grasps.  Sodden  routine  is 
incompatible  with  ideality,  although  what  is  sod- 
den routine  for  one  person  may  be  ideal  novelty 
for  another.  This  shows  that  there  is  nothing 
absolutely  ideal:  ideals  are  relative  to  the  lives 
that  entertain  them.  To  keep  out  of  the  gutter 
is  for  us  here  no  part  of  consciousness  at  all,  yet 
for  many  of  our  brethren  it  is  the  most  legiti- 
mately engrossing  of  ideals. 

Now,  taken  nakedly,  abstractly,  and  imme- 
diately, you  see  that  mere  ideals  are  the  cheapest 
things  in  life.  Everybody  has  them  in  some  shape 
or  other,  personal  or  general,  sound  or  mistaken, 
low  or  high ;  and  the  most  worthless  sentimental- 


MERE  IDEALS   ABB  INSUFFICIENT  293 

ists  and  dreamers,  drunkards,  shirks  and  verse- 
makers,  who  never  show  a  grain  of  effort,  courage, 
or  endurance,  possibly  have  them  on  the  most  co- 
pious scale.  Education,  enlarging  as  it  does  our 
horizon  and  perspective,  is  a  means  of  multiplying 
our  ideals,  of  bringing  new  ones  into  view.  And 
your  college  professor,  with  a  starched  shirt  and 
spectacles,  would,  if  a  stock  of  ideals  were  all 
alone  by  itself  enough  to  render  a  life  significant, 
be  the  most  absolutely  and  deeply  significant  of 
men.  Tolstoi  would  be  completely  blind  in  de- 
spising him  for  a  prig,  a  pedant  and  a  parody ;  and 
all  our  new  insight  into  the  divinity  of  muscular 
labor  would  be  altogether  off  the  track  of  truth. 

But  such  consequences  as  this,  you  instinctively 
feel,  are  erroneous.  The  more  ideals  a  man  has, 
the  more  contemptible,  on  the  whole,  do  you  con- 
tinue to  deem  him,  if  the  matter  ends  there  for 
him,  and  if  none  of  the  laboring  man's  virtues 
are  called  into  action  on  his  part,— no  courage 
shown,  no  privations  undergone,  no  dirt  or  scars 
contracted  in  the  attempt  to  get  them  realized. 
It  is  quite  obvious  that  something  more  than 
the  mere  possession  of  ideals  is  required  to 
make  a  life  significant  in  any  sense  that  claims 
the  spectator's  admiration.  Inner  joy,  to  be 


294  TALKS   TO   STUDENTS 

sure,  it  may  have,  with  its  ideals;  but  that  is 
its  own  private  sentimental  matter.  To  extort 
from  us,  outsiders  as  we  are,  with  our  own  ideals 
to  look  after,  the  tribute  of  our  grudging  recog- 
nition, it  must  back  its  ideal  visions  with  what 
the  laborers  have,  the  sterner  stuff  of  manly 
virtue;  it  must  multiply  their  sentimental  sur- 
face by  the  dimension  of  the  active  will,  if  we 
are  to  have  depth,  if  we  are  to  have  anything 
cubical  and  solid  in  the  way  of  character. 

The  significance  of  a  human  life  for  communi- 
cable and  publicly  recognizable  purposes  is  thus 
the  offspring  of  a  marriage  of  two  different  par- 
ents, either  of  whom  alone  is  barren.  The 
ideals  taken  by  themselves  give  no  reality,  the 
virtues  by  themselves  no  novelty.  And  let  the 
orientalists  and  pessimists  say  what  they  will, 
the  thing  of  deepest  —  or,  at  any  rate,  of  com- 
paratively deepest  —  significance  in  life  does  seem 
to  be  its  character  of  progress,  or  that  strange 
union  of  reality  with  ideal  novelty  which  it  con- 
tinues from  one  moment  to  another  to  present. 
To  recognize  ideal  novelty  is  the  task  of  what 
we  call  intelligence.  Not  every  one's  intelligence 
can  tell  which  novelties  are  ideal.  For  many  the 
ideal  thing  will  always  seem  to  cling  still  to  the 


THE  COMPLETELY   SIGNIFICANT  LIFE         295 

older  more  familiar  good.  In  this  case  character, 
though  not  significant  totally,  may  be  still  signifi- 
cant pathetically.  So,  if  we  are  to  choose  which 
is  the  more  essential  factor  of  human  character, 
the  fighting  virtue  or  the  intellectual  breadth,  we 
must  side  with  Tolstoi,  and  choose  that  simple 
faithfulness  to  his  light  or  darkness  which  any 
common  unintellectual  man  can  show. 

But,  with  all  this  beating  and  tacking  on  my 
part,  I  fear  you  take  me  to  be  reaching  a  con- 
fused result.  I  seem  to  be  just  taking  things  up 
and  dropping  them  again.  First  I  took  up  Chau- 
tauqua,  and  dropped  that;  then  Tolstoi  and  the 
heroism  of  common  toil,  and  dropped  them; 
finally,  I  took  up  ideals,  and  seem  now  almost 
dropping  those.  But  please  observe  in  what 
sense  it  is  that  I  drop  them.  It  is  when  they 
pretend  singly  to  redeem  life  from  insignificance. 
Culture  and  refinement  all  alone  are  not  enough 
to  do  so.  Ideal  aspirations  are  not  enough,  when 
uncombined  with  pluck  and  will.  But  neither 
are  pluck  and  will,  dogged  endurance  and  in- 
sensibility to  danger  enough,  when  taken  all 
alone.  There  must  be  some  sort  of  fusion,  some 
chemical  combination  among  these  principles,  for 


296  TALKS  TO   STUDENTS 

a  life   objectively  and  thoroughly  significant   to 
result. 

Of  course,  this  is  a  somewhat  vague  conclu- 
sion. But  in  a  question  of  significance,  of  worth, 
like  this,  conclusions  can  never  be  precise.  The 
answer  of  appreciation,  of  sentiment,  is  always 
a  more  or  a  less,  a  balance  struck  by  sympathy, 
insight,  and  good  will.  But  it  is  an  answer,  all 
the  same,  a  real  conclusion.  And,  in  the  course 
of  getting  it,  it  seems  to  me  that  our  eyes  have 
been  opened  to  many  important  things.  Some  of 
you  are,  perhaps,  more  livingly  aware  than  you 
were  an  hour  ago  of  the  depths  of  worth  that  lie 
around  you,  hid  in  alien  lives.  And,  when  you 
ask  how  much  sympathy  you  ought  to  bestow, 
although  the  amount  is,  truly  enough,  a  matter 
of  ideal  on  your  own  part,  yet  in  this  notion  of 
the  combination  of  ideals  with  active  virtues  you 
have  a  rough  standard  for  shaping  your  decision. 
In  any  case,  your  imagination  is  extended.  You 
divine  in  the  world  about  you  matter  for  a  little 
more  humility  on  your  own  part,  and  tolerance, 
reverence,  and  love  for  others ;  and  you  gain 
a  certain  inner  joyfulness  at  the  increased  impor- 
tance of  our  common  life.  Such  joyfulness  is  a 
religious  inspiration  and  an  element  of  spiritual 


THE  LABOR-QUESTION  297 

health,  and  worth  more  than  large  amounts  of  that 
sort  of  technical  and  accurate  information  which 
•we  professors  are  supposed  to  be  able  to  impart. 

To  show  the  sort  of  thing  I  mean  by  these 
words,  I  will  just  make  one  brief  practical  illus- 
tration, and  then  close. 

We  are  suffering  to-day  in  America  from  what 
is  called  the  labor-question ;  and,  when  you  go  out 
into  the  world,  you  will  each  and  all  of  you  be 
caught  up  in  its  perplexities.  I  use  the  brief  term 
labor-question  to  cover  all  sorts  of  anarchistic  dis- 
contents and  socialistic  projects,  and  the  conserva- 
tive resistances  which  they  provoke.  So  far  as 
this  conflict  is  unhealthy  and  regrettable, —  and  I 
think  it  is  so  only  to  a  limited  extent, —  the  un- 
healthiness  consiits  solely  in  the  fact  that  one-half 
of  our  fellow-countrymen  remain  entirely  blind 
to  the  internal  significance  of  the  lives  of  the  other 
half.  They  miss  the  joys  and  sorrows,  they  fail  to 
feel  the  moral  virtue,  and  they  do  not  guess  the 
presence  of  the  intellectual  ideals.  They  are  at 
cross-purposes  all  along  the  line,  regarding  each 
other  as  they  might  regard  a  set  of  dangerously 
gesticulating  automata,  or,  if  they  seek  to  get  at 
the  inner  motivation,  making  the  most  horrible 


298  TALKS   TO   STUDENTS 

mistakes.  Often  all  that  the  poor  man  can  think 
of  in  the  rich  man  is  a  cowardly  greediness  for 
safety,  luxury,  and  effeminacy,  and  a  boundless  af- 
fectation. What  he  is,  is  not  a  human  being,  but  a 
pocket-book,  a  bank-account.  And  a  similar  greedi- 
ness, turned  by  disappointment  into  envy,  is  all 
that  many  rich  men  can  see  in  the  state  of  mind 
of  the  dissatisfied  poor.  And,  if  the  rich  man 
begins  to  do  the  sentimental  act  over  the  poor 
man,  what  senseless  blunders  does  he  make,  pity- 
ing him  for  just  those  very  duties  and  those 
very  immunities  which,  rightly  taken,  are  the 
condition  of  his  most  abiding  and  characteristic 
joys !  Each,  in  short,  ignores  the  fact  that  happi- 
ness and  unhappiness  and  significance  are  a  vital 
mystery ;  each  pins  them  absolutely  on  some  ridic- 
ulous feature  of  the  external  situation ;  and  every- 
body remains  outside  of  everybody  else's  sight. 

Society  has,  with  all  this,  undoubtedly  got  to 
pass  toward  some  newer  and  better  equilibrium, 
and  the  distribution  of  wealth  has  doubtless  slowly 
got  to  change :  such  changes  have  always  hap- 
pened, and  will  happen  to  the  end  of  time.  But 
if,  after  all  that  I  have  said,  any  of  you  expect 
that  they  will  make  any  genuine  vital  difference^ 
on  a  large  scale,  to  the  lives  of  our  descendants, 


F1TZ-JAMES   STEPHEN  QUOTED  299 

you  will  have  missed  the  significance  of  my  entire 
lecture.  The  solid  meaning  of  life  is  always  the 
same  eternal  thing, — the  marriage,  namely,  of 
some  unhabitual  ideal,  however  special,  with  some 
fidelity,  courage,  and  endurance ;  with  some  man's 
or  woman's  pains. —  And,  whatever  or  wherever 
life  may  be,  there  will  always  be  the  chance  for 
that  marriage  to  take  place. 

Fitz-James  Stephen  wrote  many  years  ago 
words  to  this  effect  more  eloquent  than  any  I 
can  speak :  "  The  *  Great  Eastern,'  or  some  of  her 
successors,"  he  said,  "  will  perhaps  defy  the  roll  of 
the  Atlantic,  and  cross  the  seas  without  allowing 
their  passengers  to  feel  that  they  have  left  the 
firm  land.  The  voyage  from  the  cradle  to  the 
grave  may  come  to  be  performed  with  similar 
facility.  Progress  and  science  may  perhaps  en- 
able untold  millions  to  live  and  die  without  a 
care,  without  a  pang,  without  an  anxiety.  They 
will  have  a  pleasant  passage  and  plenty  of  brilliant 
conversation.  They  will  wonder  that  men  ever 
believed  at  all  in  clanging  fights  and  blazing 
towns  and  sinking  ships  and  praying  hands ;  and, 
when  they  come  to  the  end  of  their  course,  they 
will  go  their  way,  and  the  place  thereof  will  know 
them  no  more.  But  it  seems  unlikely  that  they 


300  TALKS   TO   STUDENTS 

will  have  such  a  knowledge  of  the  great  ocean  on 
which  they  sail,  with  its  storms  and  wrecks,  its 
currents  and  icebergs,  its  huge  waves  and  mighty 
winds,  as  those  who  battled  with  it  for  years  to- 
gether in  the  little  craft,  which,  if  they  had  few 
other  merits,  brought  those  who  navigated  them 
full  into  the  presence  of  time  and  eternity,  their 
maker  and  themselves,  and  forced  them  to  have 
some  definite  view  of  their  relations  to  them  and 
to  each  other."  * 

In  this  solid  and  tridimensional  sense,  so  to  call 
it,  those  philosophers  are  right  who  contend  that 
the  world  is  a  standing  thing,  with  no  progress,  no 
real  history.  The  changing  conditions  of  history 
touch  only  the  surface  of  the  show.  The  altered 
equilibriums  and  redistributions  only  diversify  our 
opportunities  and  open  chances  to  us  for  new 
ideals.  But,  with  each  new  ideal  that  comes  into 
life,  the  chance  for  a  life  based  on  some  old  ideal 
will  vanish ;  and  he  would  needs  be  a  presumptu- 
ous calculator  who  should  with  confidence  say  that 
the  total  sum  of  significances  is  positively  and  ab- 
solutely greater  at  any  one  epoch  than  at  any  other 
of  the  world. 

I  am  speaking  broadly,  I  know,  and  omitting  to 

*  Essays  by  a  Barrister,  London,  1862,  p.  318. 


CONCLUSION  301 

consider  certain  qualifications  in  which  I  myself 
believe.  But  one  can  only  make  one  point  in  one 
lecture,  and  I  shall  be  well  content  if  I  have 
brought  my  point  home  to  you  this  evening  in 
even  a  slight  degree.  There  are  compensations: 
and  no  outward  changes  of  condition  in  life  can 
keep  the  nightingale  of  its  eternal  meaning  from 
singing  in  all  sorts  of  different  men's  hearts. 
That  is  the  main  fact  to  remember.  If  we  could 
not  only  admit  it  with  our  lips,  but  really  and 
truly  believe  it,  how  our  convulsive  insistences, 
how  our  antipathies  and  dreads  of  each  other, 
would  soften  down!  If  the  poor  and  the  rich 
could  look  at  each  other  in  this  way,  sub  specie 
ceternatii,  how  gentle  would  grow  their  disputes ! 
what  tolerance  and  good  humor,  what  willingness 
to  live  and  let  live,  would  come  into  the  world ! 


THE  END. 


BY  PROFESSOR  WILLIAM  JAMES 


Principles  of 
vo££t  Psychology. 

J 1 93  pp.,  8vo.     $4.80  net. 


Psychology, 

Briefer  Course. 

478  pp.,  12mo.     $1.60  net 


John  Dcwey,  Professor  in  the  University  of  Chicago. — "A 
remarkable  union  of  wide  learning,  originality  of  treatment,  and, 
above  all,  of  never-failing  suggestions.  To  me  the  beat  treat- 
ment of  the  whole  matter  of  advanced  psychology  in  existence. 
It  does  more  to  put  psychology  in  scientific  position,  both  as  to 
the  statement  of  established  results  and  as  stimulating  to  further 
problems  and  their  treatment,  than  any  other  book  of  which  I 
know." 

James  Sully,  in  Mind. — "  Professor  James  is,  before  every- 
thing else,  original, —  energetically,  aggressively  original.  He 
must  see  things  with  his  own  eyes ;  and  woe  to  the  man  who 
comes  between  those  eyes  and  their  object !  This,  I  take  it,  is 
the  deepest  source  of  charm  in  all  his  writings.  The  freshness, 
the  force,  the  wholesome  contempt  for  other  men's  work, —  when 
this  takes  on  the  aspect  of  mere  lumber, —  all  this  is  very  admi- 
rable. Our  author  has  the  magical  power,  given  to  the  very  few, 
of  re-creating  his  subject.  The  much-tormented  human  mind 
loses  its  dull,  worn  look  in  his  hands,  and  becomes  alive  again. 
.  .  .  His  work  will  live  —  if  only  through  the  charm  of  its  literary 
expression  —  when  most  text-books  lie  dusty  and  forgotten." 

Professor  Victor  Brochard,  itt  the  article  "James  ( William) " 
of  the*  Grande  Encydopedie,  vol.  xx. — "This  book  of  Mr.  James's 
is  certainly  one  of  the  most  important  works  of  the  time.  Ad- 
mirably informed  on  all  the  work  accomplished  in  physiological 
and  psychological  research  in  France,  Germany,  England,  and 
Italy,  Mr.  James  has  produced  a  very  exact  and  complete  picture 

(JOJ) 


of  the  science  up  to  the  moment  of  writing.  .  .  .  For  vigor  of 
thought  and  clearness  of  exposition  this  work  is  at  present  un- 
equalled, and  it  assures  to  the  American  thinker  an  eminent 
place  among  the  philosophers  of  the  nineteenth  century." 
[Translated.} 

The  Nation. — "  It  is  probably  safe  to  say  that  it  is  the  most 
important  contribution  that  has  been  made  to  the  subject  for 
many  years.  Certainly,  it  is  one  of  the  most  weighty  productions 
of  American  thought." 

W.  P.  Coupland,  in  the  Academy. — "We  have  found  it  im- 
possible to  give  an  estimate  of  its  varied  wealth  within  present 
allowable  limits.  Almost  every  chapter  teems  with  fertile  sug- 
gestions, and  none  the  less  evinces  a  first-hand  acquaintance  with 
all  the  important  work  previously  done.  The  general  reader,  it 
may  be  added,  will  find  the  book  anything  but  a  dull  one." 

Leon  Marillier,  in  the  Revue  Philosophique. — "  In  spite  of  the 
objections  which  would  necessarily  be  raised  to  the  theories  it 
contains,  it  is  nevertheless  a  glorious  work,  and  one  which  for 
the  future  will  have  a  conspicuous  place  in  the  library  of  all 
psychologists  between  the  works  of  Taine  and  Stuart  Mill." 
[Translated.} 

Hon.  James  Bryce,  in  the  Speaker. — "  Those  who  retain  any 
taste  in  that  direction  —  namely,  of  philosophy  —  will  find  Mr. 
James's  book  one  of  the  brightest  and  freshest  that  recent  years 
have  produced.  In  it  metaphysics  have  again  condescended  to 
speak  the  language  of  polite  letters,  and  learning  has  been  wise 
enough  to  take  wit  for  her  companion." 

Theodore  Flournoy,  in  the  Journal  de  Gentve. — "  These  brilliant 
studies  of  powerful  originality,  broadly  conceived  and  profoundly 
tested,  interest  scholars  as  much  as  the  popular  manuals  repel 
them.  Moreover,  the  author  has  done  science  no  injury  in 
replacing  the  dry  and  pedantic  style  of  his  predecessors  with  a 
composition  full  of  life,  spirit,  and  youthful  fancy,  of  mischief 
joined  with  bonhomie, —  with  happy  applications  to  every-day 
life, —  holding  the  attention  and  diffusing  charm  and  clearness 
over  the  most  difficult  chapters."  [Translated.} 
(304) 


W.  D.  Howells,  in  Harper's  Monthly. — "  The  talk  is  not  only 
about,  but  round  about,  the  human  mind,  which  it  penetrates 
here  and  there,  and  wins  a  glimpse  of  unsayable  things.  The 
fascination  of  the  quest  forever  remains,  and  it  is  this  fascination 
which  Professor  James  permits  his  reader  to  share.  ...  If  psy- 
chology in  this  book  is  treated  philosophically  rather  than  scien- 
tifically, there  can  be  no  question  but  it  is  treated  profoundly  and 
subtly,  and  with  a  never-failing,  absolute  devotion  to  the  truth. 
This  devotion  is  as  signal  in  it  as  the  generosity  of  the  feeling, 
the  elevation  of  the  thought,  the  sweetness  of  the  humanity,  that 
characterize  it." 

The  Athenaeum. — "It  is  as  racy  and  vivid  in  style,  as  full 
of  fresh  and  original  thought,  as  it  is  replete  with  knowledge  of 
detail  and  animated  by  a  broad  and  comprehensive  view  of  its 
subject-matter.  ...  Of  the  fourteen  hundred  pages,  we  do  not 
think  that  we  have  found  one  dull,  though  perhaps  more  than 
one  superfluous." 

Max  Dessoir,  in  the  article  on  the  "  History  of  Psychology  "  in 
Rein's  Encyclopaedischen  Handbuch  der  Paedagogik,  1896. — "A 
strong  inclination  toward  the  study  of  abnormal  phenomena  is 
also  shown  by  that  investigator  whom  we  may  single  out  from 
the  imposing  array  of  American  psychologists, —  Baldwin,  Ladd, 
Jastrow,  and  others.  I  mean  James  [1890].  James's  is  not  a 
systematic  mind.  His  accounts  of  things  suffer  from  subjectivity 
and  ngurativeness  ;  yet,  by  the  power  of  his  separate  thoughts 
and  the  manner  in  which  he  sweeps  one  forward,  he  begins  to 
influence  European  science."  [  Translated^ 

Professor  J.  McK.  Cattell,  in  his  vice-presidential  address 
before  the  American  Association  for  the  Advancement  of  Science, 
1898. — "But  the  land  lay  fallow,  and  twenty  years  ago  the  seed 
was  sown.  James  at  Harvard  began  the  publication  of  a  series 
of  striking  articles,  culminating  in  the  issue  in  1890  of  the  '  Prin- 
ciples of  Psychology,'  a  work  of  genius  such  as  is  rare  in  any 
language  and  in  any  country." 

HENRY  HOLT  &  OCX,  Publishers, 

29  Vest  23d  Street,  New  York. 

(305) 


A  f\  r\  '" "'"  'HI  I'll 

v/    w  I  *r   OOO        8 


Date  Due 


OCT  2  6  1364 


